Nothing that you can conjure in your wildest dreams will ever be as awesome as this man’s YouTube page. Link from an old buddy in Iraq…not sure where he found this guy.
Category: Bloggers
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NYT’s James Glantz’ smoke and mirrors
James Glantz who was New York Times’ Baghdad Bureau chief in 2007, writes a clearly misleading article today in the Times related to contractors in Afghanistan. The misperception begins in the title “Contractors Outnumber U.S. Troops in Afghanistan“;
Civilian contractors working for the Pentagon in Afghanistan not only outnumber the uniformed troops, according to a report by a Congressional research group, but also form the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel recorded in any war in the history of the United States.
Of course the illusion here is that these “contractors working for the Pentagon” are all security personnel ranging the countryside fighting the war our soldiers won’t fight. Glantz perpetuates his illusion;
What is clear, the report says, is that when contractors for the Pentagon or other agencies are not properly managed — as when civilian interrogators committed abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq or members of the security firm Blackwater shot and killed 17 Iraqi citizens in Baghdad — the American effort can be severely undermined.
You have to read every line of the article to find out that he’s not talking about just private security contractors. Buried in the middle of the article is a single line;
The 68,197 contractors — many of them Afghans — handle a variety of jobs, including cooking for the troops, serving as interpreters and even providing security, the report says.
So basically, Glantz is worried because uniformed troops aren’t cooking their own meals, hauling their own trash, doing their own laundry and sewing. Our soldiers are doing more trigger pulling operations while locals are doing the mundane functions that we’ve had to retain active duty people to accomplish through the centuries. Not to mention local interpreters who don’t have to be trained (like the troops whom it costs thousands of dollars and many months to train).
dicksmith at VetVoice recognizes Glantz’ mischaracterization of the situation but can’t avoid a reflex reaction;
Simply put, having more contractors than uniformed troops on the ground in a combat zone is unacceptable. We need to ween ourselves off the use of contract labor in combat all together.
Of course, that’s easy for dicksmith to say, he doesn’t much care that all of those dreary tasks would have to be accomplished by someone – and so what if it drains manpower. He’s not going back, so what does he care?
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Pretender now works at VetVoice
In what was probably a difficult search to replace the gaping void at VetVoice left by the passing of Brandon Friedman, the Angry Rakkasan, (known at TAH as Beaker), the lightweights left behind have settled on Matthew Alexander;
Mark Alexander wrote a book a while back advocating for treating terrorists in more friendly manner. Taking them to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard, whispering sweet nothings in their mite-infested ears – stuff like that. It was supposedly based on his experiences as an Air Force Officer and interrogator. The only problem is, Matthew Alexander isn’t his name. We don’t know what his name is because he won’t tell us. We can’t verify if he was an Air Force Officer or some homeless guy off the street who had an idea for a book.
Yeah, yeah, I know his name is supposed to sealed by court order to “protect” him – but you know what? No one in the military is an island.
Think if Jesse MacBeth had used a fake name and announced it before he went public and told his tales. How would we have been able to bust him? Find people in his unit who could tell us those things never happened. Essentially, that’s what I’ve done (with the help of an anonymous mole).
Apparently, no one in the Air Force has heard of this goofball or the cases he’s wrote about in his book. And the folks I’m getting this from are folks who would’ve worked with, trained with and known Alexander or whatever his name is today.
Here’s a quote from my mole;
One fact “Alexander” gives, in particular, would make him very well known in OSI – he claims to have been a Pave Low pilot prior to entering OSI… um, no. Not to say it couldn’t happen, but it would be VERY rare, and would be much remarked about.
I did a search of the OSI Agents and couldn’t find a single one with a secondary AFSC of 11 (pilot). First of all – why would you transfer from the one field that is most likely to get you a star to one that is least likely?
There is ONE OSI General. It’s just not done, you know what I mean?
And no one has heard of someone with this background. He should have attended the OSI Reserve conventions/whatever they’re called with people I know. They should know who he is. They have no idea. And no one recognizes his picture.
Uh-oh. The narrative begins to not fit. Good question, though – why would a guy in an organization called the AIR FORCE want to stop being a pilot?
In his book, Alexander claims that he was in Saudi Arabia in 2003 (can’t place him there, still, and that even narrows things more). He recounts one episode of walking through the Saudi desert with over a million dollars (page 122). OSI NEVER has that much baksheesh cash. NEVER. And he would not have been walking through the desert alone with it. EVER. It didn’t happen.
The single most important thing about Alexander’s claim to have been the one that “broke” the guy and got the information to find Zarqawi is this: Zarqawi WAS NOT LOCATED DUE TO INTERROGATIONS. Period. This is even mentioned on Wikipedia (even though they have this asshole’s name up there, too). It was a tip.
What I can tell you about his Huachuca claims, and his other interrogation claims, is this: he claims that his approach of building rapport is new and novel. [redacted] went through Huachuca in 2002 – and that’s what they taught him then. Alexander is taking advantage of the fact that most people have no idea of what goes on there to claim credit for something that he didn’t start.
So here’s a guy who arrives at the cutting edge of the politics of torture battle with just the right story to tell, as far as the Left is concerned. (And, oh, did I mention that besides working for Vote vets, Alexander works for George Soros?). We can’t check his story, we can’t even check his ID – for no good reason.
How many faux veterans have told you in a bar that their records are top secret? That’s usually the first thing they begin their stories with – like our Spooky 8 clown.
Can I be prove he’s lying? Nope…but all I need to do is plant a seed of doubt. You’ll remember that Rick Duncan/Strandlof was a diarist on VoteVets, so I guess this is a way to avoid that mistake again – hide your phony vet writers behind a court order and a name change.
There may be more to come on this douche, depending on the heat I get from Vote Vets – given their record, they’ll try to ignore this instead. Like they ignored the Rick Duncan story.
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Meet The Burn Pit
There’s a new blog in town, it’s from the American Legion and it’s called The Burn Pit. It’s got a cool (hot) design and it’s geared towards veterans, of course.
Oh, and you guys, the loyal, long-time denizens of This Ain’t Hell had a big hand in building it. Maybe someday you’ll hear the exciting story, your chances improve if you get the opportunity to ply one of us with alcohol.
In the meantime, go check it out. But don’t forget to come back.
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TSO vs. Army Sergeant; Saturday’s talk show
The lovely Greta of Kiss My Gumbo has forwarded us the link to the TSO and AS match up last Saturday morning in the event you missed it.
They both did a fine job (AS did the best she could with what she has to work with).
Here’s the link for the downloadHere’s the link for the download, have a ball.
BTW, it’s a 7mb .wmv file and it’s safe for work.
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The post in which I Torque off COB6
The guy who used to sit next to me in our Bradley turret during Desert Storm sent me this link and I couldn’t resist poking the bear. The fellow whose bio is at that link did his level best to get COB6’s ass shot off at a place in Iraq forever known now as 73 Easting.
Apparently, the Army had the good sense to keep him from having anymore command assignments. I can’t mention his name because COB6 has forbidden it.
This (now) colonel and I had several run-ins, too, but they were more a clash of egos – he never tried to convince me to change direction 180 degrees and attack a company of M1s head-on. At night. In a 360-degree armor battle wherein the M1s had already taken out a sister company’s platoon.
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TSO on the radio
Can’t get enough TSO? Well, he’ll be on the radio this morning with our lovely pal, Greta Perry from Kiss My Gumbo. They’ll be on from 9-9:30 CENTRAL time on AM 690 WIST. If you’re not in Louisiana, listen at this link. If you want to call in and ask questions, the number is 888-880-WIST.
Last I heard, Army Sergeant will be on as well – sounds like raucous fun..
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Ackerman; Too bad Agosto wasn’t a birther
Spencer Ackerman, who has been fired from nearly every Leftist rag on the East Coast, takes up for Victor Agosto at his latest employment venture, the Washington Independent;
Ackerman probably doesn’t understand the difference between a Reserve Officer who volunteered for duty, then changed his mind and a Regular Army soldier who was ordered and then refused to report for duty. Of course Ackerman sees political expediency as the reason that Cook didn’t go to jail and ignores the rules that govern personnel issues of military members.
Yeah, Ackerman put a partial explanation in parenthesis, but it’s all secondary to the point he wanted to make that birthers get a pass with Obama administration pulling strings to hide their boss’ deep dark secret.
That’s probably why Ackerman can’t keep a job.