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

Category: Military issues

  • The Army as a big stupid Drama Queen

    The Army is really getting on my nerves these days. Take for example the report presented to the media today about the Hasan murders at Fort Hood by mega-moron and drama queen Togo West;

    As many as eight Army officers could face discipline for failing to do anything when the alleged shooter in the Fort Hood rampage displayed erratic behavior early in his military career, two officials familiar with the case said, speaking on condition of anonymity before the report’s release.

    Notice that Hasan is still an “alleged shooter” but eight Army officers are going to be disciplined for not doing anything about him. Does anyone really believe that after these Army officers are disciplined, pogues will stop covering for each other? Does anyone think that commanders won’t discipline, fire, or otherwise punish any Muslim subordinate for acting like Hasan?

    Like does anyone think that LTC James Billings will be punished? LTC James Billings was that “Army Officer” character who threatened to blow in the team at TAH for posting Hasan’s ORB. Why should Billings be punished? Well, he posted a comment here anonymously and current Army policy dictates that Army officers “own” their comments by not hiding behind a screen name – especially when conducting Army business. He threatened to call the CID on us if we didn’t take down the ORB (not realizing that it had been copied hundreds of times already)…and then he did. That’s Army business.

    Billings is a serious pogue. His AKO profile lists his assignment to Fort Benning during Desert Storm as a “deployment”. I hear the SCUDS were hitting Fort Benning daily. Billings is a PAO officer currently assigned to the Pentagon (surprise!) who thinks the rules don’t apply to him…but he’d come down like a ton of bricks on some poor private using a screen name, I’ll bet you.

    I’m not in the Army anymore, and I’ve never wanted to stomp a mudhole in an O-5’s ass like I want to stomp one in Billings’ ass. Drama queen pogue.

    More drama queen shit? How about this article (it’s a very one sided report, but it sounds too true) from Army Times;

    An Illinois National Guard soldier in Afghanistan has been charged by the Army with possessing child pornography over pictures of a young relative his mother says she sent him.

    Terri Miller of Galesburg says she sent her son, Spc. Billy Miller, pictures of the little girl to help him get over his homesickness.

    The pictures show the child in a swimsuit playing a wading pool and sitting on a truck. In one, the girl is wearing a swim suit and part of her buttocks are exposed.

    The Army says Miller will stay in Afghanistan until his court-martial. His unit came home last August. Miller faces jail time, if convicted.

    Terri Miller says the pictures are innocent. She says her son is close to the girl.

    There’s more of this WTF? story at the Chicago Sun-Times.

  • Hasan investigation reveals that pogues act like pogues

    A two month investigation into the shooting of scores of soldiers at Fort Hood by a REMF-ass doctor who was being sent to the war has been completed and arrived at the same conclusions that have been known to every buck sergeant since the beginning of time – pogues skip PT and no one does anything about it. From the Stars & Stripes and the Chicago Tribune;

    Investigators found that the [Army Medical Corps] places too little emphasis on being a good military officer. Hasan was promoted because he was an adequate doctor. But he was a poor officer and should have been forced to take corrective action. The review determined Hasan was overweight, avoided physical training, was frequently late and did not meet standards for appearance.

    So, the Army is going to reprimand some other pogue officers for allowing pogues to act like pogues. Does it guarantee that pogues won’t skip PT and get porky? Nope. It just covers the Army’s collective ass for this investigation.

    But Hasan was a difficult person to work with and at other times pushed back forcefully against counseling. At one point, the review found, a supervisor insisted he get help by seeing a Muslim psychiatrist.

    Hasan refused, saying his religious views were none of the Army’s business. The supervisor backed down, a decision the review found was a mistake.

    So, Hasan was able to throw the “Islamic” card and everyone let him slide.

    Despite the failings, the review did not conclude it was a mistake to send Hasan to Fort Hood and found no clues that he would become violent.

    Despite the fact that Hasan was a marginal performer, they promoted him and sent him to work with real combat soldiers – not a mistake at all. The troops don’t necessarily deserve good services. It’s more about the Medical Corps and their career development.

    After all, the real reason Hasan went off was because of gun laws;

    The report also looked at weapons policies. Hasan had two weapons, one given to him by his brother in Virginia and one bought in Texas, when he arrived in Fort Hood.

    Because he resided off base, there was no requirement to disclose he owned those weapons.

    The review does not recommend a specific weapons policy, but does say there should be a unified department policy, rather than one that varies by service or installation.

    When the Army is doing it’s best to look beyond the real reasons for this incident, it’s always best to blame the guns.

  • UN Says Taliban Cause Rise in Civilian Deaths

    A good read from the AP that doesn’t for once blame unmanned drones for all the death and carnage in Afghanistan.

    I found this part most interesting:

    A survey released this week found that 42 percent of the 1,534 Afghan respondents now blame the violence on the Taliban — up from 27 percent a year ago. Seventeen percent blame the U.S., NATO or the Afghan security forces, down from 36 percent a year ago. But 66 percent said airstrikes by the U.S. and international forces were unacceptable because they endangered too many innocent civilians, even though they might help defeat militants.

  • Trouble in my old AO

    I was very saddened to see that a series of bombings in the city of Hit in Iraq killed eight including the family of Lt. Col Suleiman (the BBC says he was a major but he wasn’t), the leader of a counter-terrorism unit in Hit. After my battalion left Ninawa province, my company was assigned an AO that stretched from the western outskirts of Ramadi all the way up to the city of Haditha. In the middle of that AO was the city of Hit, which was about six klicks south of the COP we were posted at. During my time in Hit, there wasn’t a lot of insurgent activity. There were weak attempts at placing IEDs that targeted convoys moving from Al Asad Airbase along MSR Bronze and of course the occasional pot-shot at our posts and helos flying into our COP. RKG-3s, like everywhere else in the country at the time, were also a problem. One of the reasons why Hit, which at one point was literally controlled by insurgents, was so quiet during my time there was because an effective Iraqi police and counter-terrorist force had been trained and deployed in the city, which was led by Lt. Col Suleiman. The Iraqis were able to do most operations on their own and almost never requested our help. Iraqi forces even had an EOD capability in our AO, and on one occasion were able to defuse a complex magnetic IED on their own, without any assistance from our Navy EOD attachment. Of course, it wasn’t perfect in Hit. The mayor was extremely corrupt and used money the Americans gave him to hold parties that resembled something out of Miami Vice at his home along the Euphrates River. Some of the local IPs were related to known insurgents and were helping them elude American and Iraqi forces. But the progress made in just a short time is amazing and shouldn’t be ignored.

    When most media outlets report these incidents, they seem to relish in the carnage they cause. For years most of the chattering class in the media predicted and even cheered on complete failure in Iraq. When the surge worked and violence subsided, many media outlets turned to magnifying isolated attacks or political failures in an attempt to show that Iraq was on the verge of coming apart. I remember when I was in Iraq on several occasions reading New York Times and Washington Post articles about bombings in Baghdad, Mosul or up the road in Ramadi and the writers implying that the whole country was on the verge of coming apart. There were was a lot of this type of hysteria in the lead up to the June 30th deadline to withdraw from the cities, with many predicting that once the Americans left these cities would explode. Of course this never happened, and for the most part, Iraqis were able to fill the void left by departing American forces.

    The bombings in Hit do not mean that the city will come apart and explode into violence, as some people predict and secretly want. The Iraqi Security Forces (most likely with little or no American help) will attempt to track down the savages who committed these acts of violence down and if they catch them, well, lets just say that the Iraqis’ version of GITMO is a hole in the desert. Take that last part however you want…

    090326-M-7997R-027

    Iraqi Army rehearsing for a raid in Hit

  • Happiness Is A Belt-Fed Weapon

    Around the time I was seperating from the Marine Corps, there was a lot of talk in infantry units about how the Marine Corps was trying to replace the SAW in line infantry fireteams with a project called the Infantry Automatic Rifle (IAR). Last month, the Marine Corps selected what is essentially an HK-416 with a longer, heavier barrel as the IAR. The Marines Corps says that it will not completely phase out the SAW from its inventory, keeping it around for tasks such as base security and for use on vehicles. Some of the stuff I have read on the IAR has stated that the SAW will still be in an infantry battalion’s T/O &E, but it wasn’t clear on how it would be employed. Even though the Commandant has expressed doubts about the program, the IAR is waiting on approval for production from Congress. The Army will not be participating in the IAR program.

    I think the Marine Corps is making an incredibly stupid decision pursuing the IAR as a replacement for the SAW. The intent behind removing the SAW from the rifle squad is to increase the mobility and speed of the squad by replacing the “heavy” and “cumbersome” SAW with something lighter. According to the Marine Corps Times, when Marines pushed into Baghdad in 2003, the average fighting load was about 50 lbs. Now that is what I call a “Quantico stat” (meaning it came from some pogue’s office in Quantico) so I am going to add 20 lbs to that number. In 2009, Marines were going into battle in Iraq and Afghanistan with close to 90 lbs (110 lbs) of gear on average. Every grunt that has deployed to either OIF and OEF in the last couple years knows damn well that the majority of that weight increase has come from the increased weight of body armor and other personal protective equipment (PPE). E-SAPIs, side SAPIS, neck protectors, groin protectors (I’m not opposed to this one), nape protectors… I’m sure there is other people here that could add to the list. All these things have added a tremendous amount of weight to the grunt’s fighting load. Not to mention that the Modular Tactical Vest (MTV), which replaced the Interceptor in Marine Corps service last year, is two pounds heavier than the Interceptor and restricts movement more than the Interceptor and is much more difficult to put on. Some units are deploying with lighter plate carriers to Afghanistan but almost everybody heading over to Helmand still has to haul their MTV. So whats weighing down the rifle squad more? 60 lbs of PPE per Marine or 2 or 3 17 lb SAWs with about 30 lbs of ammo each distributed among the squad?

    The SAW is not perfect. It is heavy and anybody that has humped one knows its a beast. It is a lot harder to maintain than an M4 or M16 and it is definitely a lot less reliable. Nobody can dispute however that the SAW, when properly employed, can dish out an incredible amount of firepower and adds a lot of lethality to a rifle squad. The Marine Corps understood this when it introduced the SAW and that is why over the last twenty years the Marine Corps has built the rifle squad and fireteam around the SAW. Removing the SAW from the infantry will require that the Marine Corps completely rethink how the fireteam is employed and retrain infantry unit leaders. More dangerously, it will reduce the lethality of Marines operating in Afghanistan where often the only thing that has saved Marines from being overrun is a massive amount of fire superiority, which the SAW provides.

    The IAR is unforunately just another bullet on a list of bad decisions that Marine Corps has made about gear over the last few years. The Lightweight Helmet, while superior to the old PAGST, is still heavier than the Army’s MICH and has a lower cut which makes it harder to shoot in the prone (which is while most Marine Corps Sniper and Recon units use the MICH). The ILBE pack, while probably great for hippies hiking the Appalachian Trail, doesn’t work well with body armor. Worse the Marine Corps has recognized this and is going back to the MOLLE which the Marines Corps replaced years ago because of its crappy plastic frame. I’ve already talked about the MTV.

    If the Marine Corps wants to reduce weight and increase mobility, invest in developing lighter body armor and synthetic materials to use to build new SAWs which are lighter than current models. The Army is already doing it with the 240 and other weapons. The Commandant thinks this is a stupid idea, but since he is playing politics with this decision just like he did with the MTV, he is just going to sit back and let System Command make the decision.

    No doubt replacing the SAW will increase speed and mobility. It will also make it easier to run away from a fight when you are  outgunned.

  • Nah, don’t worry about Marc Hall

    Last month I wrote about newly-minted IVAW member Marc Hall who was “stop lossed” in the Age of Obama at Fort Stewart, GA so retaliated by writing a violent rap song – which in turn got him tossed in the hoosegow by the Army. The Stars and Stripes reprints the violent verses;

    “[Expletive] you colonels, captains, E-7 and above
    You think you so much bigger than I am? …
    I’m gonna round them up all eventually, easily, walk right up peacefully
    And surprise them all, yes, yes, y’all, up against the wall, turn around
    I got a [expletive] magazine with 30 rounds, on a three-round burst, ready to fire down
    Still against the wall, I grab my M-4, spray and watch all the bodies hit the floor
    I bet you never stop-loss nobody no more.”

    Pretty explicit about his intentions. The Army explains why they locked him up;

    “The chain of command has a legal obligation to the citizens of the United States to investigate and deal fairly with SPC Hall’s alleged misconduct,” Kevin Larson, a spokesman at Fort Stewart, said in an e-mail. “Anything less would be irresponsible to our citizens and soldiers.”

    Of course they have a legal obligation to protect soldiers and their families from crack pots. But Hall’s lawyer, James Klimaski, doesn’t see it that way;

    Hall’s song is just a song and should not be taken literally, the lawyer said.

    “Listen to rap songs,” Klimaski said. “I mean there are a whole bunch of rap songs talking about killing people all the time. Nobody gets killed from them.”

    Klimaski also downplayed the allegations that Hall made additional threats.

    “The problem with threats is they can’t be contingent,” he said. “ ‘I will do this if …’ Well that’s not a threat because if ‘if’ doesn’t happen, then there’s no threat. Like, let’s say, ‘I’m going to shoot the battalion commander if I’m deployed.’ Well he’s not been deployed, so he’s not going to shoot the battalion commander, so there’s no threat.”

    Klimaski also said the definition of rampage means to run around like a crazy person. “That’s not a threat,” he said.

    Yeah, all you hep cats get with it – rap is cool. It’s just art and no one ever gets killed because of it. Well, except all of those rappers and people who attend rap concerts and rap promoters. And Hall won’t shoot his battalion commander if the commander doesn’t send him Afghanistan – problem solved. Of course, that wouldn’t have any long term effect on the military, will it?

    “Maj. Hasan didn’t run around and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to blow people away at the hospital, or the infirmary today.’ Or the bomber going into Detroit says, ‘Oh, I should tell everyone I’m on this plane and blow the plane up,’” he said.

    So people who make wild-assed statements can now be ignored and we start worrying about people who DON’T communicate threats. That sounds feasible.

    I thought about making a threat here on the life of James Klimaski, but then I realized, he might not think of threats against his life the same way he thinks about threats against the lives of military people.

    But then again, if I make a threat against his life, that would make me less likely to actually do anything against him…this is all so confusing. We should hire James Branum to take Klimaski to court and make Klimaski give us all classes on how not to be perceived as a threat to other people.

  • Whoever heard of such a thing?

    Matthew Yglesias is throwing a hissy at his place because of some former Bush “officials” who won’t support Obama based on a New York Times article by Peter Baker who writes;

    A half-dozen former senior Bush officials involved in counterterrorism told me before the Christmas Day incident that for the most part, they were comfortable with Obama’s policies, although they were reluctant to say so on the record. Some worried they would draw the ire of Cheney’s circle if they did, while others calculated that calling attention to the similarities to Bush would only make it harder for Obama to stay the course. And they generally resent Obama’s anti-Bush rhetoric and are unwilling to give him political cover by defending him.

    Yglesias writes;

    It’s really staggering what this says about the ethical caliber of the people we’re talking about. These are the toughest issues out there. Obama is, they think, doing the right thing. But some of them don’t want to say he’s doing the right thing because that might make Dick Cheney mad and they’re timid, gutless careerists? And others don’t want to say he’s doing the right thing because their feelings are hurt that a Democrat said bad things about his grossly unpopular Republican predecessor? For this they’re going to undermine support for policies that they themselves believe are keeping the country safe?

    Staggering? Really? Six people who Baker calls “officials” (they could be Pentagon janitors for all we know) and that’s supposed to be staggering.

    What about the scores of “gutless careerists” that opposed the Bush policies for eight straight years on the public airwaves even though they knew in their tiny black hearts that what Bush was doing was an appropriate response?

    What about that list of Democrats who came out for attacking Iraq in 1998, voted for Saddam’s removal in 2002 and then spent six years crying crocodile tears over the Bush policy of preemption? What about those Senators who spent more than six years crying about the PATRIOT Act after they voted for it? Did those three congressmen who stood on the roof of Saddam’s palace really think Saddam was more trustworthy than Bush – or were they being gutless careerists?

    There are tons of things they can be crying over in regards to Republicans, but this is nit-picking.

  • Moonbat math

    Sporkmaster sent me this article from the Leftist Op/ED News which demonstrates to me that the Left has a reading comprehension problem. Look at these statistics they post;

    Total U.S. Military Gulf War Deaths: 73,846
    – Deaths amongst Deployed: 17,847
    – Deaths amongst Non-Deployed: 55,999

    Total “Undiagnosed Illness” (UDX) claims: 14,874
    Total number of disability claims filed: 1,620,906
    – Disability Claims amongst Deployed: 407,911
    – Disability Claims amongst Non-Deployed: 1,212,995

    Percentage of combat troops that filed Disability Claims 36%

    Now, according to the article, this proves that military is hiding servicemembers’ deaths. Their claim is that 77,000 US service members died DURING the current war in the Gulf region. And the author’s source for the statistics is strangely missing.

    So what’s his point?

    More than 1,820 tons of radio active nuclear waste uranium were exploded into Iraq alone in the form of armor piercing rounds and bunker busters, representing the worlds worst man made ecological disaster ever.

    Yes, we’ve heard it before at Winter Soldier from mega-moron Matt Howard who claimed that we’re disposing of our nuclear waste by firing it off in two pound chunks as DU-tipped tank rounds. How big of a moron do you have to be to believe some stupid shit like that?

    Actually, it’s the reason that New Mexico Congressional candidate Adam Kokesh was storing his urine the refrigerator at the DC IVAW House – he thought he was poisoned by DU-tipped darts. Turns out he wasn’t, though.

    It seems to me that someone might’ve noticed 77,000 dead soldiers.