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

Author: TSO

  • The great ICUHAJI debacle of ’12

    I’ve contacted the lawyer and the author of this article in an unrealized attempt to get the actual lawsuit or filings in the court, but alas nothing so far. Nonetheless, from the Virginia Pilot comes this little bit of asshattery:

    They were seven letters on the license plates: ICUHAJI.

    Phonetically, it could be read, “I see you, Haji.”

    To the Department of Motor Vehicles, the message was considered offensive to Arab Americans and grounds for the tags’ revocation.

    But to a former sergeant in the U.S. Army, the plates sent a message of support for the soldiers who served with him during two tours in Iraq.

    Sean Bujno of Chesapeake, who was honorably discharged in 2009, is appealing last month’s decision by the DMV to revoke his plates. In Circuit Court documents, he contends that DMV Commissioner Richard Holcomb violated his free-speech rights and his 14th Amendment right to due process.

    OK, first, I really don’t see how that sends a message of support, but to each their own I suppose. I’m not a huge believer that every use of the “Haji” is evil incarnate, showing the racist bigotted views of the military. Haji-mart to me never meant anything bad, in fact, to me it was a little slice of Eden where one could get 12 seasons of some TV show for like $1 a disc. (This last trip I purchased Legend of the Seeker, Stargate Atlantis, Sarah Connor Chronicles and Farscape, thus solidifying my nerd credentials.)

    The free-speech rights thing strikes me as absurd though.

    “The government can’t be charged with deciding what we can and cannot say,” said Andrew D. Meyer, Bujno’s attorney. “There are going to be people who don’t like a certain message, but that is why there is the First Amendment.”

    See, I don’t really see it that way. If Sgt Bujno wants to go out to the village green and repeatedly yell “I See you Haji” until he is blue in the face, that would be a Free Speech issue. But my limited understanding of license plates is that they are meant to identify an automobile, not to make some sort of statement. You have a right to say “I effen hate the Yankees” but I wouldn’t get away with using that as my statement in a public HS Yearbook. This strikes me as analogous to the argument made by the IVAW dipshits that kept trying to crash the Presidential Debates. Sure, you have a right to say what you want, but you don’t have the right to hijack something public to make that happen. You don’t have the right to dress up in outlandish gear including a stocking over your head for your drivers license picture, but you certainly have the right to do that if you feel like going to McDonalds looking like a collosal idiot.

    I’m curious what you guys think? Setting aside whether it is appropriate (which I think is at least arguable) do you guys think that the Gov’t owes you an obligation to express yourself however you want on your vanity plate, or does it seem that the Gov’t has a certain obligation to maintain decorum? The 14th Amendment angle also seems weak to me. The Gov’t isn’t depriving this guy of a license plate, they’re simply requiring that it meet the standard they set which facially appears to be pretty content neutral. For instance, I’m guessing “ICUHONKY” would also be verbotten.

  • TSO Beard Day 3, He’s a Macho, Macho, Macho Man

    Day 3: Village People Biker.

    [EDITOR’S NOTE: Seriously, this is so fricken gay I am putting it after the jump. How Gay is it? Imagine Liberace, the N’Sync dude and A-Rod all in a hot tub naked listening to Elton John. Now, raise that by 10 to the power of 57, and you’re within a few orders of magnitude. A guy who watches Thelma and Louise with a gallon of icecream and tears streaming down his face would look at this and tell me to man up. This picture makes Andy Dick look like Chuck Norris. You have been warned.]
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  • TSO bringing sexy back, Civil War style

    Day 2: Civil War General

    (Image deleted, Bernath keeps stealing my pictures.)

    Look favored by: Incompetent Union Generals who singlehandedly lost the battles of Fredericksburg and The Crater; Theodore Evelyn Mosby when trying to win the breakup with Canadian Heartthrob Robin Sparkles Scherbatsky. (Two beavers on your cheeks are better than one.)

    Strengths: A man sporting this look absolutely has nothing to lose. It only retains roughly half the food of the previous look, and allows the fist hidden under my third chin to have a virtually unimpeded path to hippies faces.

    Weakness: are legion. Where to start. For one thing, you literally can not blend in with any group. Not businessmen, not Starbucks employees, not even Steam Punk conventions. I still have to eat a donut with a unhealthy quantity of hair, which rips out of my face and forces me to cry like an IVAW member when he watches the annual unicorn slaughter Michael Yon when he finds out his he/she is an actual she. Still cannot quickly or without collateral damage engage in Irish Car Bomb chugging contests.

    Overall: I give this a 2/10 only because I am a softy. I literally can’t imagine anyone going with this look on purpose. If I was still wearing a helmet, it might be better, but in the absence of that eventuality, this look is just not good.

    PS, if you don’t get the shirt, read it fast. That was a gift from Blackfive’s Uber Pig, and one of my favorite shirts.

  • Five days of Facial Hair with TSO

    Day 1:  The Unabomber look

    Look favored by: lunatics who live in log cabins and eschew technology; people who stand around with signs foretelling the end of times; anyone living in the wild who owns a pet bear; guys who have no shot at female companionship.

    Strengths: A man walks around with a beard like this, and people know he means business.  And by “business” I mean making corn whiskey out back in a dangerous contraption.  Snacks are readily available from the flotsam stuck in the hair from previous night.  If you purse your lips, your boston terier can’t quite get his tongue in your mouth.  You can put on manjammies and walk away from Taliban attacks, only to explain to the unit that picked you up that you were sent here by Odin to monitor the work of Leif Erickson.  People tend to stay away from you on public transport.

    Weaknesses: Female companionship is as unattainable as Valhalla.  Guinness drinking makes you look like a “Got Milk?” commercial.  Possums living under your deck think you are a bear, and go for the snout.

    Overall: I give it a 5/10.  It’s not totally horrid, but it itches a lot.  Kissing my wife is nigh on impossible, since I just end up with a mouth full of red/grey hair.  Also, the chin strap for the helmet rather irritates it.  I actually had to comb it at one point to get dry powdered eggs out of it.

     

  • So what is the SOP on a big-ass, possibly pregnant possum stuck under your deck?

    Do I contact animal control, the landlord, let the dogs kill it?  Adopt it?

    I assume possums carry rabbies, which is a bad thing, right?

     

  • I’m in Dubai, and surrounded by women dressed like Ninjas.

    I hope I can fight my way through them if need be.  I don’t see any Katanas.

    Either way, I have $21 to my name (in cash) and no clue whether my cc’s will work from here.  I also have about 9 hours to blow before my flight.  I could take my ambien and sleep in a corner, but seriously dude, everyone here is incredibly scary.  I think the dude checking my passport was Lawrence of Arabia.

    There’s a fat American sitting near me, but dude is wearing a clip on tie, and I would rather fly back to Kandahar than talk to a fat guy with a clip on.  I met this cool fricken helicopter pilot on the plane here, and am supposed to meet him at the Irish pub inside the terminal. Only, they won’t let me in the terminal until 3 hours prior to my flight.  Now mind you, I was already INSIDE the damn terminal, but had to come out for my army bag.

    Also, I have an E-Ticket, and I have no clue what that means exactly.  I want one of those little kiosks and insert my cc and get my ticket, only there isn’t any.  (This post interrupted by 4pm prayer time.)

    So here I sit in Dubai, with a huge ass army green duffel bag, a computer bag with a pillow affixed to the top, wearing a Ranger Up shirt and Red Sox hat, barely any money, no actual physical ticket, and a MAC Book Pro battery that will die soon.

    If I can beat down these ninja’s, I still won’t have Facebook.

     

  • Back on BAF; inflation at 33% over the past 6 years?

    I really hate this place.  No, seriously, I hate it.  It is all that is bad about both a war zone, and being at home.  Because no one ever recognizes my badge and my orders, I was forced to hit Popeyes for lunch.  It was bad.  Real bad.

    Luckily, I will not be sleeping in the transient tent, as the media folks here squared me away nicely with a little room (about 7′ x 10 feet with a bunk bed and a regular bed and a fridge.)  Went down to the PX, bought crap I didn’t need.  Ate my popeye’s and then made my appt for a massage at the Russian massage parlor.  I noted two things, they refurbished that spa thing (the massage rooms used to be to the right, the Disney side) and hour massages have gone from $15 an hour to $20 an hour.  Personally, I blame it on the french, who are all walking around with this pizza box looking beret that is absurd looking.

    Nothing really to report, other than exfill has begun.  Hit KAF tomorrow and play gay chicken with HeadHunter6 and roommates for 2 or 3 days and then work on transport to my PCS duty station of Fort Livingroom.

    /wave SGM.  You still reading my stuff Sergeant Major?  Got a piece next week I just know you will enjoy, but I will wait to let suspense build.  Might even be two weeks, I was thinking of doing it in iambic pentameter.

     

  • “Who’s in the lead” article from AP. Here in Andar, it is the ANA, we’re just along for the ride.

    We rolled into Nani (about 15 klicks south of FOB Ghazni) pretty heavy with 8 vehicles, a platoon of dismounts, and 70 Afghanistan National Army troops. We pulled into a vehicle patrol base (a large oval) and the gunners immediately took up their security positions. (ie, we had 12-3 o’clock from the route of travel.) That was when the Tali’s opened up on us with AK and RPK fire. The Afghanistan National Army troops (ANA) jumped into a wadi and began returning fire, and one of our vehicles started pumping out 40mm rounds from the Mk19 (he would shoot 15 total.) Game on!

    Now, I will finish that anecdote from earlier this week in a minute. First, I would call your attention to an article I originally saw in Stars and Stripes, but which I found on Military Times.

    KABUL, Afghanistan — A new report Wednesday by a Kabul-based think tank accuses international forces of misleading the public by calling military operations “Afghan-led” even in cases where NATO or U.S. forces are the only troops on the ground.

    The charge cuts to the heart of a public perception battle being waged in Afghanistan, where international troops are eager to showcase successes by Afghan forces and to downplay the role played by international soldiers as NATO draws down forces and hands over security to Afghan control.

    The United States and other nations that make up the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have already started pulling out troops with the goal of putting Afghans in charge of countrywide security by the end of 2014. The alliance wants to show that Afghans are up to the task so that the country does not descend into civil strife after 10 years of a NATO-led war against Taliban and al-Qaida militants.

    Well, I can’t speak for the rest of the ANA, and how commanders are utilizing them, mentoring to them, training them and getting them in the fight, but I know what CPT Michael Stewart of Able Company 3-66 is doing with his counterpart in the ANA, “Captain Z.”

    Some rounds tinged off the ass end of my vehicle as my camera rolled inside the vehicle, but any incoming rounds were drowned out by the acoustics of 70 ANA putting fire into the locations that the firing was coming from. It was probably 4-500 meters away, almost directly to our south. There was possibly another guy closer, but I have no clue, since (as stated) I was in the back of a vehicle. Before we could fully dismount and set up, the ANA were already gone.

    First, they moved two up-armored Humvees with DShKs (a Soviet 12.7 mm heavy machine gun) mounted on the roof to a location between us and the bad guys, and were pouring fire into the area. Meanwhile, with a village to the east, the ANA commander, now covered by the mounted element sent his troops into the Qalats that were in a line running south, with the bulk of the Qalats and village center to the east. As soon as the ANA got into a Qalat that had a roof capable of sustaining them which also afforded a clear field of fire on the area where we were shot from, the Commander ordered the vehicles forward. And man did they go.

    So, the ANA has secured a line of Qalats running south and has set up fire to cover both to the East and South. Now the vehicles tear out parallel to this line of Qalats, and goes directly at the fire. The two chaps on top of the vehicles are playing dueling DShK’s with 5-7 round bursts. Honestly, it was a thing of beauty. Granted, the fire from the vehicles moving at probably 35mph across uneven terrain wasn’t effective. But damned if it didn’t get the bad guys moving out of the AO.

    When I finally got up to the LOA (limit of advance) for the vehicles, you couldn’t have seen anything better.  The vehicles were 50m apart from each other, facing the route of travel, and where they were supposed to be watching, and both vehicles were in perfect turret defiladed positions.  From the other side of the qalat wall that they were up against, the only thing you could see would be two DShK’s about to tear you up.  Neither vehicle could be seen.  And the gunners were sitting back on the roofs, still behind their guns, and had to consist of 90% teeth, as they knew what they had just done was textbook, and they smiled away.

    I’ll have video and such for you later, but when I read articles like the one above, all I can think is “That’s a different ANA than the one that is securing the villages around Andar.” I want to do a long post all about the ANA and their strengths and weaknesses, but I thought this deserved immediate attention.

    I just spoke with CPT Stewart not 10 seconds ago and asked him how much guidance he gave the ANA during the TIC (troops in contact, acronym for small arms fire and other attacks) in Nani.

    “*laugh* None. Hell, I was still trying to figure out where it was coming from, and figure out who was on the ground when they were already done moving on them. I didn’t even have Comms (Communication) with them, so even if I wanted to, I couldn’t have said anything.” That would have been a ‘go’ on any MRE (Mission Rehearsal Exercise) I’ve ever seen. The React to Contact battle drill was fabulous. No OC (Observer/Controller who grades unit performance) could have found fault with them.”

    Wish the AP had been here, but I’m glad I got to see it. Will have video for you soon.

    This time, I really am going silent as I have a longish patrol tomorrow, and then need to exfil back to KAF. If I get internet, I’ll update some other stuff.