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

Category: Military issues

  • 23 Years Ago Today….

    Some guy named Saddam Hussein decided he needed the oil and ports that were part of Kuwait, and sent 100,000 troops over the border, taking over the country in less than 48 hours. Most of the Kuwaiti military and government leadership retreated to Saudi Arabia, which at the time it was feared that if Hussein were so inclined to have immediately invaded that nation, he could have done so relatively easily.

    While some of the ancillary causes of the invasion may be disputed, what is certain is that the Iran-Iraq war had depleted Iraq’s finances to the tune of some $80 billion, and that Hussein had looked to previously friendly Kuwait (they had provided port space after Basra was closed) to pay at least part of that debt, or at least forgive it. Negotiations in 1988-89 had soured relations between the two countries.

    By 8 August, ground troops including the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, and air assets including F-15’s and two CVBG’s were in or on their way to Saudi Arabia. They would be joined by over 500,000 coalition troops by January 1991.

    As for me, I wasn’t there–I was floating (sunk) somewhere off the coast of a Pacific Rim nation on op when we got word of the invasion a few days after the event. News on a submarine is a sketchy thing, where headlines and stories are given in a summary of a couple of lines, and that’s only if time is available to receive that after essential message traffic is sent and received. By the time we got back to Yokosuka, Japan just over a month after the invasion occured, the only question we were asking was whether we’d be going or not. We soon found out that there were no plans to have a major submarine presence in the Gulf, although several submarines were ultimately in the region for Desert Storm, including USS Chicago (SSN-721), USS Louisville (SSN-724), and USS Pittsburgh (SSN-720)–all VLS (Vertical Launch System) boats which allowed the latter two boats to launch at least 12 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) whereas my old boat had “conventional” launches out the torpedo tubes.

    The history is well known to those here, many of whom were either serving or in the “sandbox” during DS/DS.

    Discuss.

  • Need work? Cartels are hiring

    Several of you folks sent us links to the Fox News story that some former soldiers have been convicted of some work that they’ve done for the Mexican drug cartels including “murder for hire” schemes;

    Michael Apodaca, 22, was a private first-class stationed at nearby Fort Bliss Army Base and was attached to the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade when he was recruited and paid $5,000 by the Juarez Cartel to shoot and kill Jose Daniel Gonzalez-Galeana, a cartel member who had been outed as an informant for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Apodaca, who was the triggerman in the May 15, 2009, hit, was sentenced in El Paso District Court July 25.

    Last September, Kevin Corley, 29, a former active-duty Army first lieutenant from Fort Carson in Colorado, pleaded guilty in federal court in Laredo, Texas, to conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire for the Los Zetas Cartel after being arrested in a sting operation. Ironically, that cartel was itself founded by Special Forces deserters from the Mexican Army.

    Arrested with Corley in connection with the case was former Army Sgt. Samuel Walker, 28. He was convicted of committing a murder-for-hire in November 2012 and sentenced to 15 years in prison June 21.

    I’m not sure how much marksmanship training Apodaca had received in an Air Defense Artillery unit beyond basic training, but it looks like he was a member of a gang before he joined the military according to a paragraph further down the article;

    A spokesman told FoxNews.com that current recruiting efforts are much more stringent than even four years ago, and that anyone sporting a gang-related tattoo is no longer accepted for enlistment.

    “A person like Michael Apodaca would not even be allowed to enlist today,” Army Maj. Joe Buccino, spokesman for the Fort Bliss Army Base in El Paso, told FoxNews.com. “We’re more selective than during the height of Iraq.”

    The article mostly blames soldiers’ low pay for the spate of cartel hirings, but that’s pretty hard to believe. Even the lower grades are making more money than I made at the height of my career and I was never tempted to engage in illicit activities. I think it’s more a function of society and since we don’t raise soldiers on farms somewhere in the Midwest, they’re a product of popular culture and it has little to do with the military. Just like suicides are more related to the culture than military service.

  • The Pentagon’s Death Row

    CNN writes about the five military inmates currently awaiting their fate on Death Row and discusses the reasons that we haven’t executed a single one since John A. Bennett was executed in 1961 for the torture and attempted murder of a Austrian girl. Ronald Gray came closest in 2008 when President Bush signed his death warrant, but he got a last minute stay from a federal court.

    But a larger part of the equation appears to be the sometimes cloistered military culture, from a commanding general who can override a jury’s verdict to the routine military reshuffling of personnel, including prosecutors, defense attorneys and witnesses, every two or three years.

    “The military is a community of solidarity, a brotherhood and sisterhood, all to its own,” defense lawyer Teresa Norris said. “There is a real reluctance to execute fellow soldiers unless it’s absolutely the worst kind of case and this is the only way.”

    Well, that’s absolutely BS. Gray raped seven women killing four. Hasan Akbar killed two of his fellow soldiers and wounded 14 others on March 23, 2003 in the opening hours of the invasion of Hussein’s Iraq. I don’t consider either of them part of my “brotherhood” and I’m pretty sure that you’d be hard pressed to find someone in a US uniform who would.

    As we’ve proved here time and again at TAH, we only honor honorable service. Raping and murdering people is not honorable service. If the Hasan jury doesn’t hand down a death sentence, it won’t be because they consider him part of the brotherhood, it’s more likely a result of the reluctance in the United States these days to sentence anyone to death.

    Anyone who thinks that Hasan or Manning is part of the brotherhood, raise your hand. Yeah, I thought so.

  • Obama won’t agree to Congress’ spending cuts

    Fox News reports that the President won’t agree to any budget that limits the government’s domestic spending nor will he negotiate with Congress’ proposals to cut spending;

    [Treasury Secretary Jack Lew] also said the president was not going to accept a budget in which domestic spending is further cut to soften the blow to Defense spending.

    “That’s unacceptable,” Lew, who appeared on three Sunday shows to re-enforce the president’s positions, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “He won’t sign that.”

    Well, the president’s threats stand in stark contrast to his stance on raising healthcare costs on military retirees and reductions in military pay. He claims that he’ll veto any defense budget that doesn’t do both of those things, yet he’s immobile on domestic spending.

    And at the same time he says that he’s not going to balance the budget on the backs of veterans. So, I’m still wondering what all of my veteran friends out there who thought that Obama was good for veterans and defense have to say now.

  • Services promise combat roles for females by 2016

    Bloomberg News reports that “officials” from each military branch promised Congress today that they’re going to open up all occupational specialties to female members of their service by 2016 “without lowering the standards”;

    “We’re not going to lower standards,” said Juliet Beyler, the Defense Department’s director of officer and enlisted personnel management. “It’s not a matter of lowering or raising standards. The key is to validate the standard to make sure it’s the right standard for the occupation.”

    So I did a Vulcan mind meld with Juliet and discovered that she is going advocate lowering the performance standards and call that a “validated standard”. Um, Juliet, we’re not stupid, we can all read English, FFS. But, that’s fine, I hope you can sleep at night after your “validated standard” costs lives.

    “I’m real excited to get this done,” said Representative Loretta Sanchez, a California Democrat, who described the task as providing equal opportunity for women. “Combat performance is an important issue when people are looking at moving up in all of these organizations.”

    So, Loretta, you’ll be enlisting – you’re just that excited? I don’t see any of the women who are “excited” about this and the new lower standards being the ladies who are going to place themselves in danger – they’re all a bunch of old hags who will cluck about the failures that result from the implementation and integration and blame men instead of nature. when i see Loretta Sanchez and Juliet Beyler humping a ruck in the EIB road march or leading a squad on a live fire maneuver range, then I’ll believe they’re excited. Until such event, I’ll chalk it all up to political blather.

  • White House threatens to veto defense budget

    The Obama Administration is stomping it’s feet and holding it’s breath until it’s collective face turns blue because the Defense Budget doesn’t do what they want it to do – screw the troops and retirees, according to the Army Times;

    A veto of a $512.5 billion defense funding bill was threatened Monday by the White House budget office, not so much because of complaints about the level of defense spending but because the Obama administration doesn’t want military spending to rob money from other federal programs.

    Additionally, the White House complains the House version of the 2014 defense appropriations bill is too generous with military pay, not generous enough with pay for federal civilian workers, and doesn’t include administration-proposed cost-cutting measures such as base closing and raising Tricare health fees for military retirees.

    I’m sure there are things that could be cut out of the House bill, since it’s their practice to seed a bill with giveaways to certain Congressional districts, but instead of targeting those, the Administration is complaining about retiree health care and troops’ pay – mostly because there aren’t enough votes against them to have an impact. It’s easier to cut personnel costs than it is to tell a district they’re not getting any government-funded orders at the local defense manufacturer.

    The House bill, scheduled to be debated and passed this week, represents reduction of about $5.1 billion less than the pre-sequester defense budget for 2013 and is about $3.4 billion less than the Obama administration’s request. When sequestration is taken into account, the proposed budget is $28.1 billion more than current spending, according to the House Appropriations Committee.

    Also included in the bill is $85.8 billion for war-related contingency funds.

    War? What war?

  • Hagel warns that defense is breaking down

    Yes, the Secretary of Defense is losing confidence in his troops. And it’s all Congress’ fault because they won’t make the cuts in defense that he wants to make, according to Politico;

    “Strengthening readiness will ultimately demand that we address unsustainable growth in personnel costs, which represent half of the department’s budget and crowds out vital spending on training and modernization,” he said. “If trends continue, we could ultimately be left with a much smaller force that is well-compensated but poorly trained and equipped. That would be unacceptable.”

    Yeah, cut personnel costs and your force will be smaller than you wish. Jimmy Carter cut personnel costs and then when faced with national security threats, he reimposed draft registration in anticipation of having a hollow force if he had to deal with the Iran or the Soviet Union which had just invaded Afghanistan.

    Members of Congress have so far blocked most of the Pentagon’s cost-saving proposals, including its requests for smaller pay increases, higher health care fees and base closures. Congress also has not been able to end sequestration, which Hagel said was already hurting readiness.

    I have no doubt that it’s already hurting readiness. But it’s only because everyone is focused on cutting defense instead of whacking away some of the fat in the rest of the government. Because no one has the political will to tell colleges to slow down their 7%/year inflation of tuition costs, or to whack away some of the EPA, or cut some of the redundancy in agencies at the Commerce Department or cut some grants from the Education Department to states that have enough money for education but misspends it on administration instead of teaching.

    No, it’s always Defense that suffers, and defense is one of the things that government is supposed to do, according to the Constitution, not the rest of that ancillary crap.

    And, oh, yeah, while Hagel is crying the blues about money, Joe Bite Me and his family are touring India for four days on our dime. How does that help anyone?

    Thanks to Preston for the link.

  • Hagel: the beatings will continue until morale improves

    Speaking to about 300 Department of Defense employees at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina, Defense Department Secretary Chick Hagel told the assemblage that furloughs for about 800,000 DoD employees are likely to continue next year unless Congress halts the cuts, according to the Associated Press;

    On the heels of the department’s first furlough day, and in three days of visits with members of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, Hagel played the unenviable role of messenger to a frustrated and fearful workforce coping with the inevitability of a spending squeeze at the end of more than a decade of constant and costly war.

    The fiscal crunch also lays bare the politically unpopular, if perhaps necessary, need to bring runaway military costs in line with most of the rest of the American public that has struggled economically for years.

    Like I said the other day, this plan for sequestration was engineered by the White House, the president told America during his debates with Mitt Romney that sequestration wasn’t going to happen, then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta made no actual plans for sequestration during his tenure declaring that the plan would never be instituted. So when the deal that administration struck with Congress did actually happen because no one could spend the political capital to make a decision on how to cut the budget, they simply targeted personnel costs which are easier and impact fewer voters while each side blames the other.

    Like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey the other day when he blamed Congress for the Defense Department being unable to meet it’s national security goals. Or maybe it’s Dempsey’s fault because he’s just dutifully cutting personnel costs without doing the hard work finding actual waste and abuse that could be cut without injuring national security.