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

Category: Military issues

  • Marine regrows leg muscle

    VTWoody sends us a link to the UK Mail that tells the story of a young Marine who was injected with some tissue which helped him regrow the part of his leg that he lost in a mortar attack;

    Marine Isaias Hernandez lost 70 per cent of his right thigh muscles when an enemy mortar exploded as he tried to carry out repairs to a truck in Afghanistan.

    With such severe muscle damage Hernandez would ordinarily have had his leg amputated.

    But a re-think in the way soldiers are treated led to the wounded warrior being injected with a growth promoting substance extracted from pig bladders.

    I guess that we won’t be able to use the treatment for our wounded enemies because of the porcine tissue implants. So I guess it’s their loss.

  • The CINC Knows Best

    The 1973 War Powers Resolution was passed during the era of the Vietnam War to set out the powers of the president and Congress regarding U.S. military actions. It prohibits U.S. armed forces from being involved in military actions for more than 60 days without congressional authorization.

    It seem that there actually has been some discussion about the “Kinetic Military Action” ongoing in Libya.

    President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

    One quote struck me in particular:

    “It should come as no surprise that there would be some disagreements, even within an administration, regarding the application of a statute that is nearly 40 years old to a unique and evolving conflict,” Mr. Schultz said. “Those disagreements are ordinary and healthy.”

    Damn them old laws!

    If simply calling something “unique and evolving” means an old law doesn’t apply is that The Benchmark now?

    I won’t argue that there aren’t archaic and outdated laws on the books here and there, but this standard is more than a little troubling. The 21st century is unique and evolving compared to back around 1776.

  • Choi refuses plea deal

    Choi drag

    Daniel sends us a link to an article about drama queen Dan Choi who rejected a plea agreement with prosecutors like the other 12 defendants who were arrested with him last spring when he chained himself in uniform to the White House fence. I guess the Russians have tired with his ass because he was back in the States yesterday. Somehow Choi sees this an historical trial;

    [Jane Hamsher, of the liberal Firedoglake blog] also stated that Choi is the first person facing federal charges for protesting in front of the White House since Alice Paul was arrested for picketing the White House of President Woodrow Wilson in support of women’s suffrage in 1917 — a point later raised by Choi after today’s conference.

    Yeah, chaining yourself to the White House fence in uniform about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is just like getting voting rights for half of the American population. In the past, the gays have compared themselves to the Civil Rights movement of the ’60s and now the women’s suffrage of the last century. Keep trying guys, you’ll find an apt comparison yet.

    Ya know, if I didn’t know better, I’d think that Choi is looking forward to jail. And if he’s convicted of the charges of of violating a federal regulation prohibiting “interfering with agency functions,” specifically disobeying a lawful order of the National Park Service, that could preclude his attempts to re-enlist when DADT is finally repealed – that’s probably part of his plan because he really doesn’t want to be in the military, he just wants to be a symbol of this movement.

  • The 236th Birthday of the Army

    The June 14 date is when Congress adopted “the American continental army” after reaching a consensus position in The Committee of the Whole. This procedure and the desire for secrecy account for the sparseness of the official journal entries for the day. The record indicates only that Congress undertook to raise ten companies of riflemen, approved an enlistment form for them, and appointed a committee (including Washington and Schuyler) to draft rules and regulations for the government of the army.

    Please stand;

    There’s more at the Army Birthday website.

    It’s also Flag Day and in Virginia it’s “HOV Lane Awareness Day”.

  • Army gets smart on ACUs

    ROS, who remembers me from the battle we waged against Shinseki and his black beret more than ten years ago, sends a link from the Army Times which demonstrates that the Army is finally being smart about the beret, among other things. It seems the latest changes are a result of the new Sergeant Major of the Army, Raymond F. Chandler III, a leg tanker.

    Anyway, it seems that SMA Chandler wants the standard headgear for the ACU uniform to be the patrol cap. Fricken Duh!

    “The Soldiers didn’t like the fact that the beret was hot — it was not something that they wore the majority of the time,” he said. “And they didn’t like the fact it didn’t shade the sun and it took two hands to put on. And they didn’t like to carry two pieces of headgear to do different functions during the day.”

    The change in the beret policy will save the Army about $6.5 million over the lifecycle of the ACU. New Soldiers had been issued two berets, now they will be issued one.

    Another change would allow soldiers to sew on their name tags instead of attaching them with velcro. That never made sense tome anyway. Are you going to change your uniforms with someone else? Why would you need to change the name tags? Granted, you may have the opportunity to remove the name tags for certain operations, but how often? So often that having velcro would make it advantageous somehow?

    Who would have thought that we’d get a sergeant major with some common sense. It’s particularly satisfying that he’s a tanker, like Shinseki, who I’m convinced brought the black beret in retaliation for the bar fights over the tankers’ black berets we had at Sheridan Kaserne, Augsburg, where Shinseki was stationed when 1/75th were there for REFORGER ’75. Four years later the Army Chief of Staff took away the tankers’ black beret (and the airborne’s maroon beret).

  • That blithering idiot, Eugene Robinson

    Washington Post Pulitzer award-winning columnist Eugene Robinson, the guy who won the Pulitzer by faithfully cutting and pasting talking points from the Obama campaign for more than two years issues a warning today in his column entitled “A plan for Afghanistan: Declare victory — and leave“. Of course that’s not a plan and Robinson doesn’t really issue a warning…unless you realize that he doesn’t write anything that doesn’t jibe with the Obama Administration policy unless he clears it with them first.

    His deep and intellectual analysis ends with this line;

    The threat from Afghanistan is gone. Bring the troops home.

    Of course, he’s referring to the death of bin Laden and an out-of-power Taliban as the threat which is gone. Yes, bin Laden is gone for good and the Taliban is out of office, but will their absence be permanent? That’s tougher to answer, isn’t it?

    The weak-kneed Karzai government is making noise about “negotiating” with the Taliban for their reintegration into the Afghanistan government – does anyone honestly think that the group who throws acid in the faces of pre-teen girls for attending school will be content having only a small part in the daily lives of Afghans?

    Of course that’s a question that Robinson wants to avoid and as long as people like Robinson, who get their marching orders from the White House, make these kinds of noises, the Taliban and al Qaeda will continue fighting and hoping for the quick withdrawal of US forces from the region.

    You can bet your bottom dollar that Robinson wrote the piece today because the Obama Administration is testing the waters for an early and quick withdrawal.

  • The Conscientious Objector – A Reminder

    Many hear or see the words “I’m a conscientious objector.” and think of hippies and draft dodgers, and rightly so. But there have been others who could use that phrase with no small honor.

    I was reminded of that today when I stumbled across the name below. I remember reading about him years ago. Reckon maybe others here might not have heard of him?

    Meet Desmond Doss.

    Desmond T. Doss (February 7, 1919–March 23, 2006) was the first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor and one of only three so honored (the others are Thomas W. Bennett and Joseph G. LaPointe, Jr.). He was a Corporal (Private First Class at the time of his Medal of Honor heroics) in the U.S. Army assigned to the Medical Detachment, 307th Infantry, 77th Infantry Division.

    Desmond Doss refused to kill, or carry a weapon into combat, because of his personal beliefs as a Seventh-day Adventist. He thus became a medic, and by serving in the Pacific theatre of World War II helped his country by saving the lives of his comrades, while also adhering to his religious convictions. 

    His Medal of Honor was earned by the risks he took to save the lives of many comrades.

    Now there is a documentary about him.

    The Movie, with trailer.

    It’s on my to-watch list.

  • Rumor Doctor: Do airmen get a “substandard living allowance” when assigned to other services?

    Jeff Schogol sends us a link to his latest investigation as The Rumor Doctor; Do airmen get a “substandard living allowance” when assigned to other services? I figured it was another opportunity to take some inter-service rivalry shots at the Air Force;

    The reader explained that when he was stationed at Fort Gordon, Ga., an airman who was also assigned there claimed he was getting a special allowance for living below the standards to which he was accustomed. The airman showed the reader this extra pay on his Leave and Earnings Statement.

    My son has been in the Air Force for over ten years and I’ve had the opportunity to compare his military life to my own and I know he’s got it better. In Panama, our infantry battalion was housed on an Air Force base and we enjoyed many of the perks to which airmen are accustomed.

    Regardless, discover what the Rumor Doctor learned.