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

Category: Military issues

  • BBC Podcast

    Here’s the Podcast of the debate Uncle Jimbo and I had with some fellows from across the pond. Podcast We come in about 25 minutes into the broadcast.

    I’ll have you know I wasted the whole morning reading Kipling aloud to work on my accent.

    I guess what really made me angry was when Jimbo made the point that AP had proven themselves a dishonest broker in the information business when they released the picture of LCPL Joshua Bernard against his family’s wishes. The interviewer declared Jimbo’s point moot by proclaiming that they’d already talked about that on Monday. WTF?

    And one of the bangers and mash aficionados said that Farrell didn’t expect to be rescued so that somehow made him better than the military who hadn’t bothered to tell leaky-ass New York Times they were going to rescue him. Another WTF?

    But I had a good time – I’m glad Jimbo was there and we sure could have used Alex in there, too. Thanks for listening. Now back to the paying job.

  • TAH on the airwaves

    I got a call this morning from the BBC asking for an interview on the New York Times journalist who was rescued by British commandos this morning. So if you’re listening to their World Have Your Say radio program at about 1:30 Eastern Time, I’ll be locked in a debate with a chap from The Guardian on the subject Should soldiers risk their lives for journalists?

    Guess which side I’m on.

    Added: I guess Uncle Jimbo will be on the program, too. Listen here live at about 1:30 Eastern.

  • New York Times reporter rescued

    There is news this morning that New York Times reporter, Stephen Farrell, a British-Irish citizen has been rescued by British troops. From the New York Times;

    Armed gunmen seized Mr. Farrell and his interpreter, Sultan Munadi, four days ago while they were working in a village south of Kunduz.

    An Afghan journalist who spoke to villagers in the area said that civilians were also killed in the firefight to free the journalists. That report could not be independently verified, and details of the operation itself were sketchy.

    A British commando was killed in the raid, The Associated Press quoted a military official as saying.

    Apparently the pair had gone to investigate an incident in which German troops called for a US airstrike on two fuel tankers which resulted in 70 Afghan deaths (AP Link);

    Police warned reporters who had traveled to the capital of Kunduz to cover the tanker airstrike that the village in question was controlled by the Taliban and it would be dangerous to go there.

    According to the BBC, this isn’t the first time Ferrell has been snatched by terrorists;

    In April 2004, while on assignment for the London Times newspaper, he was kidnapped along with a colleague while covering the siege of Falluja, in Iraq. The pair were released the same day.

    It’s a cryin’ ass shame that brave soldiers have to lose their lives for careless journalists who can’t heed warnings.

  • Watch Out, Murtha! You Got Some Competition

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    We all know about the crooked, defense-contract shenanigans of Rep. Murtha from Pennsylvania and his deserted, tax-payer funded airport. But how about this Rep. Neil Abercrombie fellow who recently won the coveted porker of the month from Citizens Against Government Waste (I’m sure you already figured out his party affiliation). Apparently, the congressman is legislating that the construction for the new Marine base(s) in Guam be paid at exorbitant wages to friendly unions/companies that paid for his previous campaigns. The CBO estimates it will add another $10B to the cost, but hey what’s another billion here and there in a crippling recession. The congressman isn’t just robbing the taxpayers to pay for his 2010 governor’s race in Hawaii, he’s bragging about it. From Breitbart:

    His critics say Abercrombie is trying to win the 2010 race for governor at Guam’s expense. They’re worried that ramped-up wages—tripling pay for bricklayers, for example—would lead to a roller-coaster economy with high inflation and a plummet once construction ends in 2014. They also worry the relocation might be scuttled altogether if he gets his way.

    “He is obviously playing to the major portion of his constituency, labor union members, in order to win that election,” said John Robertson, a director with the Guam Contractors Association.

    Abercrombie’s response? “Duh.”

    “Of course I’m playing to working people. The building trades and working people have been the foundation of my political career for 36 years,” he said. “If I didn’t do this, people would say, ‘What’s wrong with him?’”

    I was once marooned in Guam for the better part of a month since some equipment in the engine room on our boat was busted. Very nice folks on the island, but, man, it is really small. It took us about half-an-hour to drive from one side to the other in the Ford Escort we rented, and that’s after we were delayed by a water buffalo standing in the road. It may be important that the Marines relocate from Okinawa in Japan to Guam, but why does a congressman from thousands of miles of way feel like he can turn the place into his own pig pen. Anyone else tired of defense contracts being dictated by political priorities in Washington as opposed to national security priorities?

  • GI Bill Hits a Snag

    Greetings to all the folks goofing off at work on a Friday.  My name’s Nixon and I’m an ex-Navy guy who’s now posing as a hippie at an NGO in Thailand.  Jonn asked me to scare off all the traffic over the weekend by guest blogging here while he’s in upstate NY and TSO is getting in touch with his inner adolescent by singing along to Sister Christian by Night Ranger. Anyways, this first one is about the much touted GI Bill.

    The Obama administration has appointed a young gentleman named Matt Flavin as the White House Office of Veterans and Wounded Warrior Policy. Not sure what the office actually does or how you fit that title on a business card, but fine by me. The more Iraq/A-stan vets in the mix, the more likely we will shed this Timothy McVeigh meme that seems to dog us to this day. WaPo states that Mr. Flavin is presumably in charge of making sure that the transition to the new GI Bill is going off without a hitch:

    Eight months into the Obama administration, Flavin’s fingerprints are on a range of policies expanding benefits to veterans of current conflicts. To ease the processing of claims at Veterans Affairs, Flavin is helping introduce an electronic medical records system. He is trying to smooth the implementation of the new GI Bill to grant more generous education benefits to veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan and other post-Sept. 11 conflicts. And he is crafting policy to better address post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries.

    I hope he works fast, because despite the good intentions of the new GI Bill, the VA is backlogged up the ying-yang with claims. From the AP:

    About two-thirds of the 67,000 remaining unprocessed claims were submitted only in the last 30 days. Claims are taking on average 28 days to be processed, and beneficiaries had been told to get them in at least a month ahead.

    However, that still leaves about 20,000 unprocessed claims that are more than 30 days old. Veterans groups said they’ll continue to monitor the backlog and hold the department to its promise to be caught up by next month.

    Keith Wilson, the department’s education service director, said much of the paperwork backlog may be from veterans simply filing to determine eligibility and not necessarily due housing checks. Any who are will get the full amount due by the Oct. 1 check period.

    If I recall correctly during my college years, after tuition, rent, and books, I had exactly enough money in my bank account to buy a 6-pack of Natural Light and 2 Budget Gourmet TV Dinners at Ralph’s. College students do not have a lot of expendable cash and often count on scholarship money, loans, and (for vets) the GI Bill just to get by day to day. Alex Horton shares a lengthy post about his turmoil in the process. I have a lot of nasty things to say about the Obama administration, but I don’t think there is a secret conspiracy to screw over veterans. However, Matt Flavin and the rest need to un-ass this bureaucratic entanglement or our college-bound vets are going to get boned.

  • Obama extends combat tours of some troops

    Fox News announces that some troops have had their combat tours in Afghanistan extended by the Obama Administration;

    Members of the 82nd Airborne Division headquarters serving in Afghanistan have been told their tours will be extended by 52 days from 12 months to nearly 14 months.

    Hundreds of officers and non-commissioned soldiers were told this weekend that they would have to stay longer so that their replacements in the 101st Airborne Division could have 12 months at home — a sign at how stretched the forces remain.

    In case you’re wondering what Democrats said when President Bush did the same thing (Washington Post);

    “The Army has attempted in vain to stabilize a rotational scheme for an unstable and open-ended strategy,” said Carl M. Levin (Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Once again, the failures of this administration are being underwritten by our troops.”

    Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the new policy will have “a chilling effect on recruiting, retention and readiness.”

    Obama also criticized Bush for extending combat tours – but I guess that was before he realized that the real world is different from the rhetorical flourishes of a campaign.

  • For God, Country, Sugar and Bananas!

    I’m constantly amazed at what passes for rational discourse on the internet these days. Never so much as when I visit the websites of the pseudo-intellectual veterans of the Left. The worst, of course, is that Jim Staro guy who we’ve featured before. His incoherence is a monument to his ignorance. But running a close second, is Gordon Duff of a completely directionless blog named “Veterans Today”. His only goal seems to be a frantic and constant whining about the Veterans Affairs Department for no good reason other than it’s not Heaven on Earth.

    Today, he zeroes in like grapeshot on US foreign policy by proclaiming “War is Unpatriotic“. He begins by declaring acts unpatriotic before we actually became a country.

    We started stealing in the 1600s, long before we were a country. Indians fed us, taught us and we sent troops into their villages and murdered them.

    I’m pretty sure that before you can commit an unpatriotic act, you have to have a “patria“, a country – it’s kinda part of the word isn’t it? But, hey, what do I know? And what troops did “we” send into Indian villages?

    Duff goes on to explain that those stupid founders tossed aside that great and wonderful Articles of Confederation document in favor of that corrupt and unworkable Constitution “to make sure “regular folks” would stay broke and hungry and end up fighting war after war started by speculators and profiteers.”. The guy is brilliant. But his true brilliance comes through in the next paragraph;

    Long before we went to war for oil, we invaded countries for sugar and bananas.

    Yeah, mostly because our Navy loved jumping into their rickety, leaky, wooden boats which required constant maintenance every minute to stay afloat, so they could travel for weeks to a mosquito-infested coast, fight disease and blood thirsty savages in hand-to-hand combat risking death at every breath so they could bring back some bananas and sugar for their cornflakes.

    Dipshit.

    His whole point is supposed to be that we’re wasting lives over a shit hole like Afghanistan. But mainly because we all love war and our soldiers are too stupid to refuse to fight them for us.

    Nobody can explain it. Nobody can justify it. Nobody even wants it but we keep on and on as though some invisible force drove us insane. Our actions are nothing but insane. We all agree on this and are powerless to stop ourselves. If our nation was a person, we would have to be committed to an asylum for the criminally insane.

    His aforementioned tenuous grasp of history (and reality, apparently) explains his self-induced ignorance.

    Our new friends at The Burn Pit take on Duff in another bit of ignorance theater in which Duff accuses the VSOs of “Sleeping With the Enemy”. Personally, I think Duff has been sleeping with the gas on.

  • George Will is wrong, wrong, wrong

    Last night, I wrote briefly about the impending George Will column in the Washington Post in which Will says we should withdraw from Afghanistan. I have nothing against George Will – in fact he and I had a nice short chat one night at the National Press Club several years back and I found him to be an affable and brilliant fellow. But, this is way out of his lane, as Uncle Jimbo wrote last night.

    Will wrote;

    So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

    Oh, Pakistan matters because it has nukes? How very Cold Warrior of you, George. Afghanistan sure mattered in September 2001, didn’t it?

    That’s typical inside-the-Beltway drivel. The best way to get some political cover is to send in some SpecOps guys occasionally to score cheap and meaningless victories against a burgeoning threat just to get the ruling party through the next election. It’s reminiscent of the Clinton aspirin factory/Bedouin tent attacks of the late 90s. Big flashy explosions that shifted little mounds of sand around the desert.

    We’re dealing with an enemy that declares a victory every time one of them successfully farts without getting a Hellfire shot up his bum. Our withdrawal from Somalia is what precipitated this war on terror – pulling our forces “off-shore” (anyone who saw a shore in Afghanistan, please tell us about it) will only embolden those stone age cretins and encourage even more attacks against our interests.

    How many times during the Bush years did we suffer the slings and arrows from the Left about how we didn’t fix Afghanistan in 1988 – now twenty years later, they’re ready to follow the same strategy. And George Will is giving them the political cover to set us up for the next attack as well as rebuild support with Democrats’ far Left constituents just as they are beginning to oppose Obama. Good one, George.