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

Category: Military issues

  • AARP member embeds with Fobbits

    MEW sent us this link and asked me to kindly rip this lady, Ann Jones, “a new one”. Well, to do that, i have to give some background on the woman. This embed wasn’t her first trip to Afghanistan…she had spent time with Afghan civilians and writes about Afghan women and the influence of the war on their lives. Ya know, that’s all well and good, but she really shouldn’t carry all of that social baggage with her when she goes to watch the Army’s Fobbits at work.

    But the odd thing is that no one seems to question the relative cushiness of this life at war (nor the inequity of the hardscrabble civilian life left behind) — least of all those best able to observe firsthand the contrast between our garrisons and the humble equipment and living conditions of Afghans, both friend and foe. Rather, the contrast seems to inspire many soldiers with renewed appreciation of “our American way of life” and a determination to “do good things” for the Afghan people, just as many feel they did for the people of Iraq.

    I emphasize all this because nothing I’d read about soldiering prepared me for the extent of these comforts — or the tedium that attends them. Plenty of soldiers don’t leave the base. They hold down desk jobs, issue supplies, manage logistics, repair vehicles or radios, refuel generators and trucks, plan “development” projects, handle public affairs, or update tactical maps inscribed (at certain locations I am obliged not to name) with admonitions like “Here Be Dragons” or “Here Do Bad Stuff.” They face the boredom of ordinary, unheroic, repetitive tasks.

    So you can see the cranky [insert insulting term for a critical old woman here] really doesn’t know what she’s doing there, so she complains about the opulent conditions which she didn’t expect. She picked up on the Fobbits complaints and without talking to combat soldiers, painted with a broad brush across them all. She spent two weeks at the FOB, went on one patrol and now she understands everything – Americans are spoiled, stupid brats.

    What a waste of an embed slot.

  • Execute Manning?

    Last night, a lot of people thought Ace had lost his mind when he wrote that Wikileaker and DADT advocate Bradley Manning should be hanged;

    Kill him. Make it a cause celebre, and make him an example to the next leaker.

    String him up and choke him until he is dead, dead, dead.

    This morning a Michigan Republican Congressman is advocating for his execution, too;

    “I argue the death penalty clearly should be considered here,” [Republican Rep. Mike Rogers] said. “He clearly aided the enemy to what may result in the death of U.S. soldiers . . . If that is not a capital offense, I don’t know what is.”

    Now, I really don’t believe in the death penalty, not for the reasons you might think. In my opinion, I don’t trust the government to take anyone’s life. I mean, would you put your life in the hands of Charlie Rangel or Maxine Waters? Anyway, I’m opposed to Manning’s execution regardless of how his trial turns out.

    But you see while I’m lifting my chin and feeling morally superior to the rest of you, I come across nimroddery like this from Michael “are you going to finish those fries” Moore;

    Moore thought that Manning “is exactly who we want in our armed forces,” and deserves the Profile in Courage award for helping to make the WikiLeaks public knowledge. “You can’t just line up and be a good German and do what you’re told to do,” Moore said in defense of Manning’s audacity.

    At that point, I realize that the only way to make sure Manning serves out his sentence without some pompous and arrogant windbag like Moore advocating for his undeserved early release from his 90,000 life sentences is to kill Manning.

  • Manning in trouble before

    Our little Wikileaks rat, Bradley Manning, has been in trouble before his current well-known crimes according to Wired which was quoted on CNN’s website;

    Wired.com recently reported that he was punished for uploading videos on YouTube in which he talked about classified buildings at the base and classified materials he saw.

    Manning did not disclose classified information in the videos, but did discuss the rooms where secure information was held, which was considered a security risk, Wired.com reported.

    Despite the punishment, Manning graduated from his training in August 2008 as an intelligence analyst with security clearance.

    So he put sensitive information on YouTube and someone thought that letting him continue his training and give him a security clearance was a good idea? Later on he was busted a stripe for some sort of altercation and no one thought he’d hold a grudge and take out the reduction and loss of pay on the Army?

    This is beginning to sound exactly like the Nidal Hassan case. Disgruntled people who showed outward signs of some sort of social disorder which the Army ignored and it came back to bite them (us) in the ass.

    Now Newsweek (in my opinion, vastly overpriced at Washington Post’s $1 asking price) reports that Taliban is using the Wikileaks documents as an excuse for revenge killings.

  • Do you know this patch?

    One of our readers sent me this picture of a patch she saw in a local store and asked me what unit it belongs to. I’ve searched high and low and can’t find it. I figured one of you folks recognize it and can help her out;

    I figure it’s a National Guard unit (because I’ve never seen it) from a Western State, what with the spear and war bonnet – how close was I?

    TSO Adds:

  • General Pelosi disagrees with White House on drawdown pace

    Well, you get the government you deserve. Here we are a year from the projected pull out from Afghanistan and already the Administration and the Congress are at odds over how fast we should cut and run. Pelosi and SecDef Gates have vastly disparate views on the pace;

    Since when does the Speaker of the House get to decide for the commander in chief? Just write the checks and shut up Pelosi. Politico writes;

    Pelosi, who saw 102 of her Democratic colleagues break ranks with President Barack Obama and oppose further war funding in a vote last week, suggested Americans would be disappointed and surprised if the initial withdrawal amounted to only a few thousand troops–a possibility recently laid out by Vice President Joe Biden.

    “Well, I hope it is more than that,” Pelosi said. “I know it’s not going to be, ‘Turn out the lights and let’s all go home on one day.’ But I do think the American people expect it to be somewhere between that and a few thousand troops.”

    Yes, a slim margin of Democrats broke with the Speaker on funding the war – probably 102 Democrats who won’t be in the House next year. The same peckerwoods who have voted against funding the war since the beginning. So who cares?

    Of course that’s been the plan all along – withdraw from Afghanistan while looking like the Administration wants to win. The goal isn’t making Afghanistan safe for us, it’s about ending our involvement no matter what Afghanistan looks like. That’s why there’s a schedule for withdrawal and not a model for success. That’s why that dick Eikenberry is still the ambassador to Afghanistan. He’s been a failure at everything he’s ever done and deflects blame so well.

    This is like last year’s tax cut. It was anemic and ineffectual, but the administration points to it every time the coming tax hikes are mentioned as proof that they’re against tax hikes. They’ll do the same in 2012 when they’re accused of losing Afghanistan – they’ll point at the anemic troops increases as proof that they want to win the war.

  • Adrienne Kinne, Blue Falcon

    Time reports that Spain’s National Court has decided to re-indict three American soldiers for killing a Spanish journalist in Baghdad’s Hotel Palestine during the last hours of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

    On April 8, 2003, one day before U.S. troops officially captured Baghdad, a U.S. tank fired a single incendiary shell on the hotel, killing Couso, a cameraman for Spain’s Telecinco television station, and Reuters journalist Taras Protsyuk. Since then, Couso’s colleagues and family have pursued a criminal investigation against the U.S. military. Their initial case, filed in May 2003, was eventually dismissed by Spain’s National Court, which cited a lack of jurisdiction. But when the higher Supreme Court reviewed the case in December 2006, it disagreed. The case was returned to the National Court, which in 2007 issued arrest warrants against Sgt. Thomas Gibson, the tank sergeant who fired the shell, Captain Philip Wolford, who ordered the attack, and commanding officer Colonel Philip deCamp.

    But on July 26, Spain’s Supreme Court again ruled that the case should continue. On Thursday morning, the National Court took up the investigation for the third time, again ordering the three men to appear in its courtroom or face extradition.

    One of the main witnesses against the three Americans is Adrienne Kinne, co-chair of the IVAW board and hardcore member of the International Socialist Organization. Here’s her profile which I snapped several months ago before she removed it;

    Yep, she’s another of those Iraq veterans who never left the US. But somehow shr thinks her testimony about events halfway around the world is relevent in relation to the Palestine Hotel incident. Like Kinne told aging hippie, Amy Goodman at Democracy Now!;

    …there were journalists staying at the Palestine Hotel and this hotel was listed as a potential target, I went to my officer in charge, and I told him that there are journalists staying at this hotel who think they’re safe, and yet we have this hotel listed as a potential target, and somehow the dots are not being connected here, and shouldn’t we make an effort to make sure that the right people know the situation?

    And unfortunately, my officer in charge, similarly to any time I raised concerns about things that we were collecting or intelligence that we were reporting, basically told me that it was not my job to analyze. It was my job to collect and pass on information and that someone somewhere higher up the chain knew what they were doing.

    Kinne claims that if her supervisor had listened to her, those Spanish journalists would have been saved. But, while everyone on Amy Goodman’s side of the discussion applauds Kinne for being a “whistleblower”, I think she’s a Blue Falcon because the Spanish National Court is ready to try three Americans for the death of two journalists in downtown Baghdad and she sides with the Spanish courts.

    SSG Shawn Gibson, the tanker who fired the shot into the hotel says he was receiving indirect fire at the same time he saw someone on the roof of the hotel with binoculars and he spent ten minutes getting permission to fire. Maybe if Adrienne Kinne had spent some time in Iraq, she’d understand why Gibson fired – but it’s much easier to be a Blue Falcon.

  • Wikileaks leaks part 2.

    Since it worked out so well the last time, they decided to try it again.

    A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

    But given how many things were ignored out of the 2007 video from Iraq, just think of all the possible discrepancies that could be present with 90,000 records? Some of the claims have been as such:

    • How a secret “black” unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial.

    • How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.

    • How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.

    • How the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of its roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.

    Yea except that if you look at each one there is not much there to see? We uses our troop to capture/kill any enemy leaders that we can. It is not the troops job to take that person to trial. Second the Taliban had Singer Missile launchers for awhile now paired with what weapons were left over during the fight with the Soviet Russia. Third we used them to provide air support and can stay in the air longer then any manned aircraft. Finally do you really think that the Taliban will reduce this if we were to leave?

    Oh this one is a keeper.

    2007 Polish troops mortared a village, killing a wedding party including a pregnant woman, in an apparent revenge attack.

    Apparent? Yea and that almost got three SEALs jail time, Apparent my ass,

    But don’t worry about double checking, Rethink Afghanistan is already running this and it is doing it’s paces around the net. Of course there is no one is even thinking about how this will effect those that are fighting in Afghanistan.

    ADDED Sporkmaster

    The White House has condemned the release stating what we already know.

    “The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk and threaten our national security,” he said in a statement.

  • Dems hoping to cut Defense spending

    Cortillaen sends us link from the New York Times entitled “Pentagon Faces Growing Pressures to Trim Budget“. Yeah, Defense is always the first to get cut under a Democrat Administration followed by massive spending by the next Republican administration to rebuild our national security to the howls of the Democrats and the media.

    After nearly a decade of rapid increases in military spending, the Pentagon is facing intensifying political and economic pressures to restrain its budget, setting up the first serious debate since the terrorist attacks of 2001 about the size and cost of the armed services.

    This is after the Democrats have shoved unneeded spending down the throats of the Pentagon to shore up employment in their respective districts. And you know the Democrats will never give up that portion of their addiction to tax payer money, so inevitably Defense spending cuts will affect the troops more than voters who will vote for Democrats for their local jobs programs.