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

Category: Military issues

  • Death By Powerpoint

    Today in my summer session geography class, a disaster the size of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico struck our basement classroom-THE PROJECTOR WASN’T WORKING. Paralysis and panic seized the instructor, who had no training on how to teach a class without a PowerPoint presentation (or on how to write on a whiteboard). She called ASU’s tech support who promised to send someone to the classroom right away to help mitigate this epic emergency. While waiting for the cavalry to come and rescue the class from our PowerPoint deprivation, the instructor rambled incoherently on topics ranging from the World Cup to why she likes Al Gore so much. Finally tech support arrived and immediately  pushed one button on the projector which fixed the problem. Tech support than returned to their dungeon fortress to continue playing World of Warcraft and Farmville. The day was saved and learning occurred.

    This was a pretty common occurrence during my first semester at ASU. Instructors and professors have become so reliant on PowerPoint to teach a class that when it doesn’t work (which is frequent) they don’t know what to do. I had at least five classes canceled throughout the semester because a projector or computer wasn’t working. My girlfriend told me that it was common when she was at University of Arizona that students would intentionally break the projectors in the hopes that class would be canceled. The problem of over-reliance on PowerPoint presentations is not just confined to academia unfortunately. As many of you know, PowerPoint has infected the US military to the point where almost nothing is done without it. In fact a couple of months ago the New York Times ran article that implied that the overuse of PowerPoint was hindering military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and forced officers to spend hours creating intricate presentations instead of devoting time to actual operational tasks. Some choice quotes from the article:

    (more…)

  • The face of treason

    Specialist Bradley Manning was arrested this weekend for perpetrating the Wikileaks video release. He has bragged that he was also responsible for countless other release according to Wired;

    He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing “almost criminal political back dealings.”

    “Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public,” Manning wrote.

    Wired.com could not confirm whether Wikileaks received the supposed 260,000 classified embassy dispatches. To date, a single classified diplomatic cable has appeared on the site: released last February, it describes a U.S. embassy meeting with the government of Iceland. E-mail and a voice mail message left for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on Sunday were not answered by the time this article was published.

    The State Department said it was not aware of the arrest or the allegedly leaked cables. The FBI was not prepared to comment when asked about Manning.

    Of course, he was turned in by a former hacker who wasn’t so disturbed by the release of the “Collateral Murder” video as he was about the 2009 diplomatic communications. So I guess he was politically motivated to rescue Obama and Clinton from the evil clutches of whistleblowers.

    I’m surprised that CID agents took valuable time away from harassing bloggers to arrest this guy, who was benign compared to antics of folks releasing ORBs of terrorists.

    Thanks to Junior AG for the link. More from Jimbo.

  • Navy puts kibosh on IVAW-UXO concert

    The latest money-raising scheme of the Iraq Veterans Against the War is their UXO Tour. UXO means unexploded ordinance – hinting that veterans back from the war are going to go off any minute now. Well their first concert was on a cruise ship in New York City and it was timed to coincide with Fleet Week when the most active duty service members, mostly Marines and Navy personnel, would be there.

    Well of course, the Navy forbade their people to go to this concert and IVAW is mightily upset. I won’t link to them, because they block traffic to their site from this blog anyway, but here’s the “press release” they link.

    “The military chain of command has no right to micromanage what service-members are doing in their off time”, said Nick Morgan, an Iraq veteran and UXO organizer. “They have no right to censor the information that’s available to them, especially when it’s within the confines of the law.”

    You remember Nick Morgan, don’t you? He was the IVAW member who got stomped by horse-mounted police at the last Presidential debate on Long Island. I guess he’s survived.

    Another organizer was junior rocket scientist Bobby Joe Grubb;

    Grubb, another IVAW member who has never seen Iraq, said;

    “We were incredibly successful in reaching out to these Sailors and Marines,” says Grubb. “We made solid contact with those we met while doing outreach”. He said many of them were interested in getting more involved in the active-duty and veteran-led anti-war movement.

    But then the Navy forbade Navy personnel from attending. So I called the Navy in New York City and spoke to a PAO LT Sean P. Riordan. LT Riordan told me the reason the Navy restricted attendance at this particular GI Resistance Concert is because all of the Marines and Sailors were in New York in an official capacity and they were all in uniform, so the Navy decided that attendance at a GI Resistance Concert in NYC during Fleet Week in uniform would be inappropriate according to military guidelines.

    Morgan also added that these concerts are helping to bring legal and mental-health resources to members of the military. “It’s imperative for these veteran-led efforts to be accessed by active-duty troops to make up for the lacking support they get from the current administration, the Department of Defense, and the Veterans Administration.”

    Yeah, that’s why they had a concert. They could hand out brochures describing the help IVAW provides soldiers – like homeless Trey Kindlinger (a former member of the Navy) and legal help like James Branum. And if the concert was about providing veterans services, why is it called a GI Resistance Concert?

    The Sailors and Marines weren’t “off” the whole time they were in NY, Nick Morgan, neither did the Navy restrict information. You could talk to them all you wanted.

    The Navy made the correct call and IVAW is left to cry into their empty glasses because they overplayed their hand.

  • Petition to name a Navy Vessel for Lt. John William Finn

    Several readers have sent a link to a petition for naming a Navy ship in honor of Lt. John William Finn, recently the oldest Medal of Honor recipient.

    For extraordinary heroism distinguished service, and devotion above and beyond the call of duty. During the first attack by Japanese airplanes on the Naval Air Station, Kaneohe Bay, on 7 December 1941, Lt. Finn promptly secured and manned a .50-caliber machinegun mounted on an instruction stand in a completely exposed section of the parking ramp, which was under heavy enemy machinegun strafing fire. Although painfully wounded many times, he continued to man this gun and to return the enemy’s fire vigorously and with telling effect throughout the enemy strafing and bombing attacks and with complete disregard for his own personal safety. It was only by specific orders that he was persuaded to leave his post to seek medical attention. Following first aid treatment, although obviously suffering much pain and moving with great difficulty, he returned to the squadron area and actively supervised the rearming of returning planes. His extraordinary heroism and conduct in this action were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

    So here’s a chance for the Navy to make up for naming a ship after Murtha. Sign the petition.

  • Playing The College Game

    Between June and September of every year is when the majority of enlisted servicemembers leave the military since high school graduation occurs towards the end of spring and early summer. Many of the people leaving the military in the coming months (whether they are retiring after 20+ years or leaving after one enlistment) are planning to go back to school and use their educational benefits which they have earned. Over the past few weeks, I have had a lot of friends still in the Corps asking me about going back to school. I really only have one piece of advice and that is that college is a game and you need to learn all the rules (and how to bend them) in order to be successful. So, I have decided make a post with some advice based on my experiences going back to school. If anybody has anything else to add, by all means post it in the comments section.

    This post isn’t going to be a rant about what a Charlie Foxtrot the VA is or about the problems they had processing Ch. 33 (Post-9/11 GI Bill) claims. If you want a pretty complete documentation of that fiasco, head over to our friend Army of Dude who has done an outstanding job documenting the various issues with VA educational benefits. Also, if you want detailed instructions on how to apply for educational benefits from the VA, head over to their website. I plan to focus on more general pieces of advice with this post.

    More below the fold…

    (more…)

  • Memorial Day thoughts

    So this is my first Memorial Day away from DC, although I missed events last year because of stupid broken ankle, but here’s the way I covered it in 2008 – at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers and at Rolling Thunder.

    Here’s my Memorial Day remembrances of a good friend and his family.

    Our buddy, Alex at “Army of Dude” wrote “Metal Memorials”

    I wrote this about five years ago so excuse me if you’ve read it;
    (more…)

  • WI vet allowed to keep flag displayed

    There’s an update to the story about a veteran and his wife who were told to remove their flag from their window after Memorial Day by their residence management company;

    A Wisconsin Army veteran — who faced eviction this week for flying the American flag — will now be allowed to keep the flag up for as long as he wants.

    Under mounting nationwide protest, Charlie Price, 28, of Oshkosh, Wis., and officials at Midwest Realty Management struck a “mutual agreement” that allows the veteran to continue displaying the patriotic symbol, according to a statement posted on the company’s website on Thursday.

  • Obama opposes larger pay raise for troops

    While the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by Ike Skelton, passed a 1.9% pay raise for the troops this year, the White House supports a smaller pat raise according to Government Executive.com;

    “The administration values the service members of the U.S. Armed Forces and believes that the president’s proposed 1.4 percent pay increase is appropriate in light of other benefits and other forms of compensation, is targeted to avoid hindering the department’s ability to focus on recruiting or retaining for key skills, and will ensure the availability of financial resources needed to sustain our combat power at a time of war,” the White House stated.

    I think I said before the election that the first thing to suffer under Democrats will be the troops’ and retirees’ pay and benefits.

    Now Democrats were fond of calling reductions in spending increases a “cut” during the Bush years. So can we call this a cut in the troops’ pay?