Moonbattery Archives

Code Pink's Latest Tactic: Child Abuse

By John

Hey so this is pretty fucked up:

Dressed as ‘zombie soldiers’ killed in combat, ‘ghosts of war victims,’ witches and healthcare fairies, members of Code Pink menacingly paraded in front of a captive audience of children one block from the White House, who waited along the sidewalk in front of Decatur House just off Lafayette Park for a Halloween party hosted by President Obama.

Last Saturday, the President hosted several hundred military families for trick or treating. Also invited were children of White House staff and about 2000 children from eleven D.C. area elementary schools.

In a press release published at their website, key Obama ally Code Pink – a group co-founded by one of Obama’s top funders Jodie Evans, announced they were targeting military families for what can only be called psychological abuse by conducting a macabre protest of the war in Afghanistan as the families waited in line to enter the White House grounds.

The crazy-cat ladies of war protesting have done so much weird shit over the years, they're really nothing more than a freak show stage act. Since President Bush left office and Iraq has been largely pacified, they've grown increasingly irrelevant -- which makes them do increasingly silly stuff to grab the occasional headline. I would say keep on ignoring them, if I didn't think their desperation for attention would eventually drive those idiots to start protesting soldiers' military funerals a la the Westboro Baptist Church. So I'll keep paying attention, if for no other reason than to point, laugh, and thank God that war protesting is a self-defeating business.

WTF is Secondary Post-Traumatic Stress?

By John

Time --

As an army psychiatrist treating soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, Major Nidal Malik Hasan had a front row seat on the brutal toll of war. It is too early to know exactly what may have triggered his murderous shooting rampage Thursday at Fort Hood — Hasan is accused of killing 12 people and wounding 32 others before he was wounded by a police officer — but it is not uncommon for therapists treating soldiers with Post Trumatic Stress Disorder (P.T.S.D.) to be swept up in a patient's displays of war-related paranoia, helplessness and fury.

vs. veteran JR Salzman, who lost a limb in combat --

[You] don’t get PTSD from sitting on your ass around Walter Reed. Not only is it not possible to “catch” secondhand PTSD, but it is not that kind of a place. I would know, I was a patient there for nine months. The place is simply not that stressful or chaotic. When I was there my PTSD got better, not worse. And I would be willing to bet my dog tags that I saw far more wounded Soldiers than shit bag major did during our overlapping time there in 2007. I regularly visited Ward 57 to give advice to the new wounded. Other Soldiers and amputees did it for me when I was there so I considered my visits “paying it forward”. I had daily physical and occupational therapy. I regularly partook in activities in and out of Walter Reed with present and past wounded Soldiers. To say that this guy got PTSD from being stationed at Walter Reed is an absolute fucking farce. The people who are making this shit up have never set foot on Walter Reed, let alone met a soldier with PTSD.

Hotel Tango -- the indispensable Lex

Nuckin' Futs

By Bull Nav

This is just too good to pass up.

Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, known for her provocative statements when she was a congresswoman from Georgia, accused the Department of Defense this week of using Hurricane Katrina to cover up the slaughter of 5,000 prisoners. At a news conference in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, McKinney claimed the Pentagon authorized the execution of the prisoners with one bullet to the head three years ago and then dumped their bodies in a Louisiana swamp.

I mean, I know things were bad down yonder in Louisana, but come on. Why would you even spout off such obvious crap?

The only redeeming thing about the whole issue is that she is running as the Green Party candidate for President, which says a whole lot about them...

The Easy Way and The Hard Way

By Lt Col P

Via B5 and MMM, this disappointing cave-in:

A national tour featuring decorated veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan won't be stopping at Forest Lake Area High School today as planned, after school leaders abruptly canceled the visit.

It looks to me like the principal just doesn't want to deal with any controversy at all, or make an even remotely tough decision. How nice. What good life lessons he's imparting to his young charges. And to make it worse, all he's facing is pissy backlash from OTHER AMERICANS.

On the other hand, want to meet a guy who isn't afraid of confronting his (and our) adversaries? He has more on the line than limp-dicked protests and mild controversy. He lives in a place with life and death consequences for dissent. Apparently he's not fazed by it, and if he is, he rucks up and does it anyway.

Now there's a lesson for you.

This Explains A Lot

By Lt Col P

Yep, this is making the rounds, but the more exposure the merrier.

Honestly, it's so over the top that one little part of me says it's a set-up.

BUUUTTTTTT the rest of me says nope, it's for real. Rob Riggle in in fact a reserve Marine, and as for the other stars, well, remember who you're dealing with. Good for the Daily Show for airing Berkley's idiocy.

"Any constitutional scholar with giant hands..." That's still making me laugh.

Pentagon Faces A Battle On Climate Change (?)

By Charlie

So say John Podesta and Peter Ogden, I, however, heartily disagree. This opinion piece in Financial Times is one of the strangest reads I’ve had in a long time, and displays a profound misunderstanding of both the purpose of the military and its real-world commitments and tasks. So here we go:

There are five key areas in which effective military planning can be undermined by uncertainty over when and how the major carbon-emitting countries combat climate change.

First, climate change poses a threat to fragile states that lack the capacity to adapt to environmental shifts. The Pentagon needs to know if the military will be called upon to operate more often in countries that have collapsed or are on the brink of doing so. The risk of a regional conflagration sparked by global warming is particularly severe in east Africa and south Asia . How urgently should the Pentagon begin planning for such contingencies?

Planning for ops in third world backwaters is nothing new, and it is something the military has become adept in executing. That is why we have methods of circumventing infrastructure problems by using staging areas, airlift, and convoys. As far as a risk of a regional conflagration in east Africa , I’m more concerned over the current conflicts there that are driven by ethnicity, religion and a struggle for resources and political power. If you want to play the six degrees of Kevin Bacon here, and link those four major issues I outlined to global warming, have at it, but the Janjaweed militias in Sudan aren’t upset over Darfur ’s carbon emission levels. Next point here, about Pentagon planning: I agree, someone should form some sort of command, and put it in charge of Africa . I’ve even got a great name picked out for it…

OK, sarcasm off, moving on:

Read More »

No Sonar in the SOCALs

By Bull Nav

Well, once again, a court has decided that it knows what is best for the country:

LOS ANGELES (AP) ― A federal judge says the Navy must follow environmental laws placing strict limits on sonar training.

So the ball is now back into the President's court, while our ASW readiness continues to be affected because some people would attempt to protect the environment based on faulty (or no) data (and where have we heard that before?).

ASW - Anti-submarine Warfare - is not an easy game. The primary tool surface ships have is active sonar, which is when you put sound energy into the water and look for a "return" similar to a radar return. In the undersea environment, there can be lots of things that cause false returns: schools of fish, whales, ships, and undersea mountains, just to name a few. When the operators get little to no practice, they will not be ready when a real situation comes along.

Therefore, as I see it, these judges are affecting readiness and the ability of the Navy to do its part, as chartered by Congress, to defend the country. Making decisions based on feelings and a serious lack of data are going to cost us one day in a big way.

These guys need to back off, and let the Navy train the way it needs to train.

Aid And Comfort

By Lt Col P

For the enemy, that is. On our shores. MMM has been following it and has details.

After seeing this pic at SFGate, I have one question though-- who's the dark-green guy giving the hippies a beat-down? A Marine? Former Marine? Incensed patriot? Either way, he doesn't look like he's on their side.

BTW, go sign the petition.

Boycott Whole Foods

By Bull Nav

Yes, incendiary as it sounds, BOYCOTT WHOLE FOODS.

In a nutshell, they fired a clerk this week, a former Marine no less, for apprehending a shoplifter. In the process, they have created an unparalleled criminal empowerment zone.

John Schultz says he lost his job at Whole Foods Market in Ann Arbor after he tried to stop a shoplifter from making a getaway.
Schultz says he had just punched out for a break at 7 p.m. on Sunday when he heard a commotion at the front door of the store, 3135 Washtenaw Ave. He said he came to the aid of the manager who yelled for help in stopping a shoplifter. Schultz, the manager and another employee cornered the shoplifter between two cars in the parking lot.
Schultz said he told the shoplifter he was making a citizens arrest and to wait for the police to arrive, but the shoplifter broke away from the group and ran across Washtenaw Avenue and toward a gas station at the corner of Huron Parkway.
Before the man could cross Huron Parkway, Schultz caught up and grabbed the man's jacket and put his leg behind the man's legs. When the manager arrived at the intersection, Schultz said, the manager told him to release the shoplifter, and he complied, and the shoplifter got away.
Schultz said he was called to the store's office the next day, on Christmas Eve, and was fired because he violated a company policy prohibiting employees from having any physical contact with a customer.

Of course, they have a policy.

Kate Klotz, a company spokesperson, said the policy is clear and listed in a booklet that all employees have to acknowledge that they received before they can start work.
"The fact that he touched him, period, is means for termination," said Klotz.

You work in a store, the manager yells for help, you chase down a shoplifter and get fired? ON CHRISTMAS EVE?

And the manager told him to let the shoplifter go after he was caught!!!

Didn't steal too much, though.

The bag contained $346 worth of food and other products.

We will not be shopping there any more, not that we did that much anyway. It sounds to me that they want low-life thieves and scumbags to come in and clean them out. I do not think that it is going to be very safe.

The company's position is that they don't want to be subjected to lawsuits because their employees touch a "customer."

Which is a load of CYA crap.

If I had been standing there and they said they were chasing a shoplifter, you can guaran-Goddamn-tee I would have joined in the chase. I just can't believe they let him go. Only in Ann Arbor...

What is Mr. Shultz's attitude?

Despite losing his job, would Schultz do it again? "Absolutely, 100 percent yes," he said, calling it his civic duty.

So if there is a Whole Foods near you call'em up and tell them you won't be going to shop there any more and tell them this story.

You can read the articles in the Ann Arbor News here and here.

NBC Re-Deploys, Supports Freedom's Watch

By Charlie

Sensing an imminent public relations backlash, NBC conducts retrograde ops:

WASHINGTON -- NBC reversed course Saturday and decided to air a conservative group's television ad thanking U.S. troops.

The ad, by the group Freedom's Watch, asks viewers to remember the troops during the holiday season. NBC had refused to air the ad because it guides viewers to the Freedom's Watch Web site, which NBC said was too political.

"We have reviewed and changed our ad standards guidelines and made the decision that our policy will apply to content only and not to a referenced Web site. Based on these amended standards the Freedom's Watch ad will begin to run as early as Sunday."

Freedom's Watch Ad Denied

By Charlie

I caught this on the news today - the ads are here. I saw one on Fox, and it was just a bunch of average joe Americans saying "thank you" to the troops abroad for serving. I really don't see anything controversial about it, but I think it does NBC more harm than good in the dust-up over their refusal to air it.

Anti-War Group Protests...um, a ban on Protesting

By John

Anti-War Vets Slam Parade Ban -

LONG BEACH - Iraq veteran Jason Lemieux might not be marching in the 11th annual Long Beach Veterans Day Parade on Saturday.

The Marine, who served three tours of duty in Iraq and is now against the war, was hoping to march as a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a national organization that calls for immediate withdrawal of troops in Iraq.

The group's application, however, was rejected last month because of its political views, parade coordinators said.

"I wanted to march like the rest of the Iraq veterans," said Lemieux, a 24-year-old Anaheim resident. "I served my country. I'm a veteran of a foreign war. I think I deserve that respect."

Iraq Veterans, along with the groups Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out, applied to march together in the parade this year under the entry "Military Patriots."

After reviewing each group's mission statement, the Veterans Day Parade Committee, a non-profit group that organizes the event, voted unanimously to reject the application, said parade coordinator Martha Thuente.

"They do not fit the spirit of the parade," she said. "The spirit being one of gratitude for what the veterans have done. We do not want groups of a political nature, advocating the troops' withdrawal from Iraq."

Mixed feelings on this. One one hand, I'm thinking that anyone who has served (and was discharged honorably) deserves to march in parade celebrating military service. On the other, those guys are being totally obnoxious. I don't know what their intentions are, but their annoying "include me or else!" mentality makes it look as if they're trying to hijack a non-partisan event and use it for their own selfish purposes. Equally irritating is the way they act as if the legitimacy of the entire constitution rests on their right to crash another Bubba's BBQ. Witness:

The rejection has left many veterans and anti-war groups outraged.

"It think it's absurd," said Adrian Novotny, president of the Long Beach Chapter of Veterans for Peace, a national nonprofit that advocates non-violence, VA healthcare and veterans' rights. "It's a violation of Democracy, the whole concept which we are allegedly dying for."

Meh. No one is stopping you from holding your own parade that no one will show up to, Beavis.

HuffPo Yanks Green Zone Series

By John

HuffPo, y'done good.

After this post was published, some commenters and bloggers, especially Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard raised a number of questions about its accuracy. As is our policy, we asked Mr. Sanders to either provide backup for his factual claims or retract them. His response follows. In it, he acknowledges three "flat-out" inaccuracies: Apache helicopters fall under the auspices of the Army not the Air Force; the USS Independence was not, as claimed, headed to the Persian Gulf in 2002 (it was decommissioned in 1998); and Sanders left out the word "battalion" in the sentence, "a pair of Apache helicopter battalions can devour more than 60,000 gallons of fuel in a single night's attack." These have been corrected in the post.

Sanders also raises the issue of jet exhaust that results when "a squadron of F-22s, say, fly sortie after sortie, at fairly low elevations, over a crowded neighborhood in Baghdad." Goldfarb says "an F-22 has never, ever, flown a sortie over Baghdad, let alone at low altitude and in squadron formation." In his response, Sanders disputes this, but Air Force spokesperson Maj. Kristin Marposon told HuffPost that F-22s have not been used in Iraq.

As for the other facts in dispute -- namely the number of jets stationed on aircraft-carrier groups in the Gulf, the number of stealth bombers and US planes in Saudi Arabia, and the number of aircraft carrier task forces stationed in the Gulf -- Sanders offers a detailed explanation of how he arrived at his figures. We'll leave it to you to decide the persuasiveness of his explanation. For us, it confuses as much as it clarifies.

Mr. Sanders feels that the dispute over these details obscures the larger point of his argument. Maybe so, but we are committed to maintaining the highest possible standards of accuracy and transparency. Accordingly, we will not be running the remaining parts of his Green Zone series.

Responsible decision. Goldfarb notes that: ...the Huffington Post has corrected its mistake and, in fact, demonstrated a laudable commitment to accuracy and transparency. Professional journalists--you know who you are--could learn a thing or two about journalism from Arianna Huffington.

He's right. Credit to HuffPo, they acted like real pros here. And yeah, The New Republic could learn a thing or too from Miss Huffington. Instead of saying "hey we screwed up" back in August, TNR has dragged out the Beauchamp affair so long that everyone -left and right- seems to be universally pissed at them for their lack of integrity. Compare that to HuffPo, who effectively killed the Sanders story on the spot. No one is going to remember this affair next week, while TNR is going to be suffering from the Beauchamp scandal for years.

Sanders retraction, by the way, was obnoxious. Read:

The argument about pollution stands; and nothing on the Weekly Standard takes on the pollution numbers! I begin the essay by saying that I write as a lay person--I am not a mathematician, not a military person, not a trained climatologist--and it would be wonderful to put together such a team and reach an absolutely authoritative version of this essay, if such a thing is even possible. At any rate, I feel initiated into this world of blog politics. As a friend told me from the outset, one cannot take on the military in this country, without getting knocked about.

Oh put down the violin dude. I'm not naive enough to think that the military should be immune from criticism. But you made an argument, and people held you accountable for what you said. And, surprise!, some folks even wanted you to defend your position. The fact that you were dumping on the service had nothing to do with your columns getting yanked, it had everything to do with the fact that you phoned in the research. So have a Coke and a smile and knock off the victim crap. This is your fault.

Mr. Goldfarb wants to know about the number of planes in Saudi Arabia. Here's my sentence: "To all that, we must add the 1,000 jets stationed on aircraft-carrier groups in the Gulf, along with 22 Stealth Bombers and another 700 planes in Saudi Arabia. First, the sentence, which perhaps could have been more clear, does not say that there are 22 Stealth Bombers in Saudi Arabia; the sentence says, we must account for them in terms of their pollution, wherever they are hidden.

Quote: In Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia.

First, the sentence, which perhaps could have been more clear, does not say that there are 22 Stealth Bombers in Saudi Arabia...

@(&*)#(()@*%

Let me quote from Chalmers Johnson's Nemesis (p. 141): "Before our withdrawal from Saudi Arabia in 2003, we habitually denied that we maintained a fleet of enormous and easily observed B-52 bombers in Jeddah because that was what the Saudi government demanded." This is the heart of my argument: "So long as military bureaucrats can continue to enforce a culture of secrecy to protect themselves, no one will know the true size of our baseworld, least of all the elected representatives of the American people." The question is how many in a fleet?

One, B-52s aren't stealth bombers. Two, that was 4 years ago. Three, the size of our current force of B-52s, B-1s, and B-2s isn't a secret. Four, the location of the bomber force (secret or not) has no bearing on the size of the bomber force.

As to the exact number of planes in the Gulf and in Saudi Arabia, again Chalmers Johnson, this time from The Sorrows of Empire, (page 239), says that by January 1991, the Prince Sultan Air Base "started to receive aircraft, and by the beginning of the Gulf War. . .it was capable of housing, servicing, and arming five fighter squadrons of aircraft and their supporting personnel (a typical American squadron consists of twenty-four aircraft.)" A few paragraphs later, he mentions F-15s and F-16s taking off there, after 1996. "In the years leading up to the second Iraq war, the air force flew a total of 286,000 missions from Prince Sultan and other Persian Gulf bases. . . ." I do not think it is possible now to know how many planes we had in Saudi Arabia prior to our leaving in 2003. The point I want readers to keep in mind is the amount of pollution generated by those hundreds of thousands of missions and how little we know about them--type, number, and so on.

Uh, how little you know about them. A symptom that could have been cured with a some basic fact checking.

Punch in Sultan Air Force Base on Google and you get the following: The Saudi base is very large and it has extensive landing and plane storage facilities. It has a 15,000 foot runway. Couple this with the numbers of flight missions from Chalmers Johnson. This was a large operation. I used the figure 700 planes. It sounds to me that it was larger, much larger, than that.

Okay, instead of getting all your information from Chalmers and the internet, a simple phone call to an Air Force public affairs office would have explained that Prince Sultan's primary use was enforcing the UN mandated southern no-fly zone in Iraq. It hasn't been a major hub for US forces since 2003.

Let's now turn to the question of the number of carrier task forces in the Gulf. First, from Reuters: "On January 20, 2007, the USS Stennis set sail for the Persian Gulf as part of an increase in US military presence within the Middle East. The Stennis joined the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the United States Fifth Fleet of operations. On May 23, 2007, the Stennis, along with eight other warships including the carrier USS Nimitz and amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard, passed through the Strait of Hormuz. US Navy officials said it was the largest such move since 2003." (Link)

How many ships does this total? Ten or Twelve? How many "carrier task forces" does that constitute? The web site Global Security (March 9, 2003) reports that "five carriers have been deployed to the region at the same time. . . an unprecedented floating air force. . ." The site says that the Kitty Hawk and the Constellation are already in the Persian Gulf. That's in addition to the Stennis, the Nimitz, and the Eisenhower. "The Lincoln left Everett, Washington. . . and was ordered back to the Gulf." We now have a total of six carriers, and who knows how many "carrier task forces," since each carrier usually travels, according to Global Security, with a "battle group of at least two cruisers, a destroyer and a submarine. Aboard each carrier is an air wing with about 70 aircraft, roughly 50 of which are strike planes." The DoD says that the Stennis actually holds ninety planes. Given the rest of the ships involved, the number is 1,000 or even more.

Does this guy have no concept of time? He's quoting Global Security from 2003 and Reuters from 2007. And even using his screwed up chronology, he still didn't account for the thirteen aircraft carriers which he claimed were all in the Gulf at the same time.

Honestly, his pseudo-retraction only make things worse. HuffPo said that it "confused more than it clarified," which is true effing statement right there. Can you imagine what the other two columns must have looked like?

Had he just said "sorry, I f*cked up. My bad." I wouldn't have got all pissy and wasted my time pumping out this enormous post.

Anyway, go read Qando and Murdoc for more. I'm as donezo as Sanders' tenure at HuffPo.

Huff'Po Knows Military

By John

This is too good to pass up. Mike Goldfarb at The Worldwide Standard braved the fever swamps of the Huffington Post to bring you this precious gem of an op-ed from English professor and apparent military genius Barry Sanders.

You're going to have to read it in chunks, because there are so many factual errors I have to copy the Goldfarb style of deconstruction.

The Green Zone: The Military's Addiction to Oil

Feeding the appetites of these voracious machines, with gasoline or diesel or kerosene, requires intricate logistical planning and support from some 2,000 trucks, a battery of computers, another 20,000 GIs, and, according to an Associated News report for September 2007, as many as 180,000 workers under federal contracts--more contract workers, in fact, than soldiers. Of the twenty-eight private security companies operating in Iraq, the major ones are Blackwater USA, Triple Canopy, Kellogg, Brown and Root, DynCorp International, and the Vinnell Corporation. The largest of them is not even American, but British, named the Aegis Corporation.

DynCorp does aircraft maintenance, logistics work, and provides security guards to deployed locations. KBR helps build operating bases. Vinnell trains the Saudi National Guard. Also, it'd help to learn the definition of mercenary. I know that every since some genius applied the term to Blackwater it's been the latest hot topic. But a merc is a soldier who fights the wars of a foreign government. Think the Hessians during our Revolutionary War or the Swiss Guard. Blackwater provides security for State and other VIPs. That's it. I can't stand the way people try to add a sprinkle of sensationalism to their rants by twisting around words to provoke an emotional reaction. It's dishonest and annoying.

Many of the contract workers are former military Special Forces troops, such as Navy Seals and the Army's Delta Force. The Seals conduct their operations with the philosophy of "spray and pray," a credo which seems to determine a good deal of the behavior of the mercenaries working for Blackwater USA, whose CEO, Erik Prince, left a career appointment in the Seals to start what is now a billion-dollar federal contracting firm, Blackwater USA.

Two paragraphs in and I'm already embarrassed for the guy. "Spray and pray?" SEALs and Delta are the most precise scalpels in our inventory. The thought of either unit running into combat with firing their weapons on full auto without even the courtesy of aiming is just plain idiotic. This also has nothing to do with military fuel consumption, Sanders is just going off on a weird inaccurate rant here.

The Navy uses an enormous amount of fuel for its nuclear and non-nuclear aircraft carriers. The recently decommissioned USS Independence, at its top speed of 25 knots per hour, consumed 134 barrels of fuel an hour, or close to 5,600 gallons an hour. (The ship boasts 4.1 acres of flight deck and a crew of 2,300.) On its way to the Persian Gulf in 2002, a trip that took fourteen days, the Independence went through two million gallons of fuel. Every four days, the ship took on an additional one million gallons of fuel, half of which went to supply the carrier's jets.

Uh, the Indy was decommed in the 1990s. It never steamed to the Gulf in '02. Also, I'm not sure if a carrier needs an UNREP every four days, but perhaps one of our Navy readers can confirm/deny? It's obvious that a conventionally powered boat like the Indy will eat more fuel than a Nimitz class, every four days seems a bit high.

Buckle up for the next paragraph folks, it's a dooz.

According to the 2006 Navy Almanac, at the beginning of 2006, the Navy held an inventory of 285 combat and support ships, along with 4,000 planes and helicopters. The DoD keeps classified the number and kinds of vessels stationed in the Gulf. But, we do know that President Bush ordered the USS Stennis and the USS Ronald Reagan to the Gulf in January 2007 as part of the surge. He also sent a "strike group," led by the nuclear aircraft carrier the USS Eisenhower, along with a cruiser, a destroyer, a frigate, a submarine escort, and a supply ship. Already sitting in the Gulf were ten other "Carrier Task Forces" built around the aircraft carriers Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Chester W. Nimitz, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, Harry S. Truman, and the Abraham Lincoln. Ninety attack planes sit on each carrier's deck, ready at any moment to fly into combat.

That's right. Every carrier in our inventory, plus one that has been waiting to be turned into scrap metal since 2003 (Constellation), was in the Persian Gulf earlier this year. Soak it in folks, military commentary doesn't get much better than this.

Of all the branches, the Air Force uses the most fuel. In 2006, for instance, the Air Force consumed nearly half of the DoD supply, 2.6 billion gallons of jet fuel, the same amount of fuel consumed from December 1941 to August 1945, during World War II. Flying machines, like the Apache helicopter, blow through fuel at an astonishing rate. Powered by two General Electric gas-turbine engines, each rated at 1,890-horse power, the Apache gets about one-half mile to the gallon. Just one pair of Apaches in a single night's raid will consume about 60,000 gallons of jet fuel. Any of the large helicopters--the Sea Stallion, Super Stallion, Sea Dragon, or Pave Low III--sucks up five gallons every mile. But that's nothing compared with the fighter planes. With its afterburners fired up, the F-16 Fighter Jet uses 800 gallons per hour, the F-15 about 1,580 gallons per hour. More dramatically, the F-4 Phantom Fighter uses 40 barrels of fuel, or more than 1,600 gallons an hour, each and every hour. But the gas hog award goes to the B-52 Stratocruiser, which has eight jet engines, and zips through an astonishing 86 barrels of fuel, or roughly 3,334 gallons per hour. In one hour of flight--600 miles--the B-52 uses as much fuel as the average driver uses in seven years.

We haven't flown the F-4 in over a decade. How dramatic. Not mentioned was the fact that the Air Force has been one of the most aggressive organizations in the world when it comes to the push for alternative fuel sources. What lacked in accuracy could have been slightly compensated for in honesty, but... whatever.

The Pentagon places the fuel it reserves for supposed international purposes--primarily for the Navy--in a category called International Bunker Fuel. Bunker Fuel--or more accurately called Bunker Oil--remains off the record, ghost stuff, as non-existent as the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, making the CO2 emissions for the military even grosser than anyone's assumptions and calculations. The problem is further compounded by the fact that Bunker Oil contains a higher concentration of sulfur than other diesel fuels, and so pollutes not just with CO2, but with SO2 (sulfur dioxide), as well. The two gases in combination do more damage to the environment, for they form a thicker layer in the atmosphere and hold the heat in more tenaciously. In actuality, then, the military may be consuming twice as much fuel as the DoD suggests, or even higher--perhaps three times as much--and polluting much more--again, perhaps, by a factor of three. Surprisingly, the United States does not figure into its own annual CO2 numbers any of the greenhouse gases that the military generates.

Can we assume that this guy knows about as much about climatology and the science behind global warming that he does about the military? I've read this paragraph three times and I still don't know what point he's trying to make here. Bunker fuel, specifically No.5, is what powers most ships...military and civilian alike. Why is he arguing that it's use is some sort of "off the record" conspiracy? And who the hell ever said that the prisoners at Gitmo were "non-existent?"

Okay so he rambles on about fuels, switching fire to JP-8 fuel which is a component of the Air Force's alternative energy program, and says this:

One of those studies, completed in March 2000 and funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency, says absolutely nothing about the contamination caused by that same jet exhaust when a squadron of F-22s, say, fly sortie after sortie, at fairly low elevations, over a crowded neighborhood in Baghdad.

Uh. We have F-22s at Elmendorf AFB, Langley AFB, and Tyndall AFB. They haven't been to Baghdad, and I can't see any possible reason for a fighter which prides itself on stealth to be flying at "fairly low altitudes." Now I remember doing an FTX in a training area at the end of Tyndall AFB's runway a few years ago where, to the delight everyone, two F-22s buzzed us at about 50 feet as they were taking off. I wasn't gassed by some mysterious noxious emission and -even at the end of a runway at one of our busiest fighter bases- I don't remember the air being the least bit smoggy.

Trying to calculate CO2 pollution for military flying is near impossible. For one thing, if we consider the Stealth F-117, we know nothing of its fuel consumption. We do know, however, that sorties for that plane at the beginning of the Iraq War lasted 1. 6 hours. Flying out of some distant bases raised the average sortie time to 5.4 hours, with some sorties lasting up to seven hours--refueling accomplished in the air. Forty-two F-117s each flew over 1,300 combat sorties.

Hi, I get all my information from Wikipedia.

Forty-two F-117s each flew over 1,300 combat sorties.

Really? Each one flew 1,300 sorties? Not the combined force? Kind of makes this equation:

Using an average of five hours per sortie, at 619 miles per hour, time in the air for just this one type of plane comes to 190,827,000 miles, resulting in an astonishing 26 million tons of carbon. To get some idea of the magnitude of that number, it would take a fully loaded Boeing 747-100, flying from Los Angeles to New York, 328,165 trips to produce that same amount of pollution. On average, 40 flights leave from LAX for JFK daily, so those 328,165 trips, in commercial terms, would take 8,204 days, or almost 23 years. Sixty other kinds of planes flew sorties over Iraq. The total amount of carbon dioxide that went into the atmosphere is not just high--but goes totally unreported.

...seem a bit off, doesn't it?

Anyway, this guy might be a bright English professor, but he is way, way, waaaaay out of his league here. Zero grasp of the subject matter. Not even a basic understanding of the military..."spray and pray," yeeesh.

It's embarrassing.

And it syncs up precisely with an enormous pet peeve of mine, military commentary from folks who know zip about the military. Blind leading the blind. We're fighting two wars and this guy wants the military to stop and form a carbon counting commission. So not only did HuffPo fail to fact check this column, they gave the guy a whole series on the subject called "The Green Zone."

I hope they turn it off. Seriously. I don't have the energy to do this again.

Soak in the Psycho

By John

I *think* it was Steve Green who asked me rhetorically in an email "You know that crazy cat lady who lived down the street from you? Code Pink is what happened when she got involved in politics."

So I submit to this court exhibit A in defense of the Green hypothesis. I can't think of a more ineffective way to get your point (which is...what?) across than to smear yourself in ketchup and shriek gibberish at the Secretary of State. This broad is a half-step up from writing coded messages with her own feces on the chamber wall.

Anyway, Code Pink does this crap all the time.... they're not smart enough to lobby the normal way, so they throw these shrill temper tantrums on Capitol Hill in the hopes that someone gives them the attention they crave. I've seen it a million times before..... with my friends' toddlers.

So crack open an ice cold Bud Light, and be thankful that the anti-war movement is so childish and inept.

And hey, entertaining too!

The New Republic Finally Folds

By John

It's about damn time.

It is now clear that somewhere along the way, TNR stopped acting in good faith and started doing damage control. They cited a Bradley expert who purportedly confirmed that the vehicle could be operated as Beauchamp described. But when Bob Owens tracked down said expert, BAE spokesmen Doug Coffey, he denied making any such statement, saying that TNR had mischaracterized his comments and that the editors had never shown him Beauchamp's stories. He added that having read the stories, they were indeed "suspicious," and that he did not believe the Bradley could be operated as described. TNR never acknowledged Coffey’s later statements or its apparent misrepresentation of his earlier statement.

And then came our report that Scott Beauchamp was no longer standing by his stories. The editors at TNR responded to this report by insinuating that THE WEEKLY STANDARD was not a credible source. They also accused the Army of "stonewalling" and preventing them from speaking with their author. That was on August 10. Bob Owens subsequently reported that TNR spoke to Beauchamp on September 7--the transcript now posted on Drudge--but TNR never returned to the subject, despite their claims of a "commitment to the truth" in that August 10 statement.

Goldfarb keeps thanking the milbloggers for the help in myth-busting this turd, but we're the ones who are grateful. Beauchamp slandered all of us with his S&M military fantasies, all to promote a writing career that wouldn't have gone anywhere even if this crap won him a pultizer (lies aside, he's an awful writer). So thanks to Mike and Bob Owens for their aggressiveness.

I'm expecting radio silence from the anti-war bloggers who so desperately wanted to believe Beauchamp's stories. It's not that I really care about being right or wrong here, I just want them to wise up. Jim Massey, Jesse MacBeth, Daniel Coburn, and now "Scott Thomas".... how many times is the anti-war movement going to be fooled before they catch a clue? Every time one of these idiots crawls out of the woodwork, anti-war bloggers and activists blindly rush to defend them without the slightest consideration for whether or not their stories are true.

So look, I don't care about them admitting they were wrong or apologies or any of that crap. I just want them to stop and acknowledge the fact that they're 0-4... that they've bet on the loser each time... and that next time (and there will be a next time, as long as people heroize these phonies) maybe they could hold back their eagerness to confirm all their fantasies about Bushitler's stormtrooper military, and reserve judgment until someone can actually verify the accusations.

The Things You See on the Road...

By Bull Nav

Driving along I94/I80 west bound tonight on my way to NAVSTA Great Lakes, I saw a billboard by these guys that said

BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!

It's just a couple of miles before you get to the new Cabela's in Hammond, IN (and I did not make it in time for the official opening of the store today in case anyone was wondering).

I tell you, I saw that sign and I thought:

HELL YEAH, BRING 'EM HOME NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LET'S GO GET OUR BOYS OUT OF THERE. I MEAN WE'RE ALL PEACEFUL NOW SO GET THEM THE HELL OUT OF THERE. WE ARE SPREADING NOTHING BUT HATRED BY BEING THERE!!!!!

Come on, what are we waiting for?!?!?!?!?!?

Just have our guys immediately drop what they are doing and head on out!!!! Hell, we have lots of experience doing that!!!

And it made everyone like us so much better...

Somalia, Lebanon, South Viet Nam...

While we are at it, let's get out of Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, the Horn of Africa, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, Germany, Belgium, the UK, Colombia, Honduras, Japan, the Phillipines...let's get out of EVERYWHERE BECAUSE EVERYBODY HATES US AND THAT'S THE ONLY WAY WE CAN BE PEACEFUL!!!!!

YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! GET THEM HOOOOOME NOW! NOW! NOW!!!!!

I felt SOOO inspired!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Idiots.

What is Wrong with the Air Force?

By John

Buckle up folks, this one is a bear.

JERUSALEM, Oct. 13 — A study of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war commissioned by the United States Air Force and to be published this month concludes that Israel’s use of air power was of diminishing value as the fight dragged on because it was used without enough discrimination.

Although the war was widely criticized in Israel and abroad for relying too heavily on the air force, the study argues that air power remains the most flexible tool in fighting groups like Hezbollah, because ground forces alone could not have achieved Israel’s aims. Israel’s error, the study concludes, was insufficient discernment in its airstrikes.

By bombing too many targets of questionable importance for its aims, and not explaining why it bombed what it did, Israel lost the war for public opinion, according to the author of the study, William M. Arkin, an expert in assessing bomb damage. “Israel bombed too much and bombed the wrong targets, falling back upon cookie-cutter conventional targeting in attacking traditional military objects,” Mr. Arkin wrote. “Individual elements of each target group might have been justified, but Israel also undertook an intentionally punishing and destructive air campaign against the people and government of Lebanon.”

If this guy could stick to straight-shooting analysis, I'd have no problem with the Air Force drawing on him as a resource. The problem is, everything that he writes is corrupted by his ideology. His military "analysis" was slanted enough to draw the attention of The Weekly Standard back in 2003:

For starters, he is the scribbler who launched the assault on Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin a week ago by providing NBC with tapes of Boykin speaking in churches, and then followed with a Los Angeles Times op-ed that accused the general of being "an intolerant extremist" and a man "who believes in Christian 'jihad'" (Arkin later admitted on my radio program that Boykin never used the term "jihad").

Arkin also wrote that "Boykin has made it clear that he takes his orders not from his Army superiors but from God--which is a worrisome line of command." This statement, like the "jihad" quotation appears to be pure fiction.

ARKIN TOLD ME he got his tip on Boykin's faith talks from a Pentagon source, which suggests that the general has an enemy inside the Pentagon. But if, as most of Boykin's critics have argued, the danger presented by the general's private talks about his faith is their effect on the Islamic world, then why did Arkin rush to publicize these private, little-noticed talks that he believes will hurt the U.S. abroad?

The answer is best found in Arkin's own speech to an audience at the U.S. Naval War College on September 25, 2002. In this lengthy and vitriolic attack on the Bush administration, Arkin admitted to feeling "cynical about the fact that we are going to war to enhance the economic interests of the Enron class," and declared that "the war against terrorism is overstated." Arkin believed, in fact, that the war "is not the core United States national security interest today." He rhetorically asked the audience: "Aren't I just another leftist, self-hating American?" and condemned the administration for taking "enormous liberties with American freedoms." "The war against terrorism," he said, "if it is a war at all, is not World War II or the Cold War, and it is grasping at empty patriotism to claim that it is." He warned of "our tendency to fall back upon secrecy and government control." And he concluded by warning that our foreign policy "convey[s] the wrong message, which is that we have no values, that we are for sale...."

Arkin caused a national uproar earlier this year when he accused American soldiers of being "mercenaries." So yeah, while he's got the cred to talk about the war, it's pretty obvious that his inability to separate factual military analysis from his strong political convictions makes him completely unreliable as an analyst.

So let's analyze his analysis.

“Israel bombed too much and bombed the wrong targets, falling back upon cookie-cutter conventional targeting in attacking traditional military objects,” Mr. Arkin wrote. “Individual elements of each target group might have been justified, but Israel also undertook an intentionally punishing and destructive air campaign against the people and government of Lebanon.”

So if I'm reading this correctly, Israel restricted itself to "cookie-cutter" aim points against strictly military targets, while they waged an unrestricted air war against the Lebanese people.

Yeah, it confused me too.

This is junior high crap, real armchair general stuff. If the US Air Force is "influenced" by Arkin's report, then the Air Force has bigger problems than its budget. Israel's air war was a highly sophisticated, force-centric campaign. Sophisticated enough, the Israelis thought, to do the job of ground troops. Hence the light grunt footprint back in summer 2006. Which, both Arkin and I agree, was foolish..... although for completely different reasons.

Here's a simplified version of the problem:

Arkin is regurgitating a popular meme in anti-war circles, that the Untied States and Israel indiscriminately use air power in their quest to defeat Islamic terrorists, despite the fact that Hezbollah is clearly the one ignoring the established law of armed conflict. It's become a common trademark with Arkin's military analysis. He disguises his opinion pieces by garnishing them with all the right military language, "target sets" and "precision air campaigns," and his only interest seems to be in pushing his ideology.

So that's that. He's a self professed leftist (not that there's anything wrong with that) and his analysis fits a common leftist narrative.

The bigger question is, why did the Air Force hire a used car salesman like Arkin? Or to paraphrase Michael, the OPFOR reader who sent me this link, "What is wrong with the Air Force????"

The New York Times answers:

While critical of how Israel used its air force, Mr. Arkin defends the flexibility of air power in counterterrorism. Although Israel was retaliating for a Hezbollah raid that captured two soldiers and killed others, he considers the war pre-emptive. He said Israel used the raid as a pretext to destroy most of Hezbollah’s longer-range Syrian and Iranian missiles and launchers, which posed the largest threat to Israel.

In a post-9/11 world, Mr. Arkin said, the likelihood of the United States’ engaging in another ground war like Iraq is very small. A better model is the fight against the Taliban in 2001, he said, emphasizing air power, special operations and covert action. The 2006 conflict was only the second war of “pure counterterrorism,” he said, which is why the Pentagon wanted to study it.

Why did the Air Force hire Arkin? Because Arkin makes the Air Force relevant again. He writes what they want to hear: that air power is critical to a successful COIN strategy, that properly executed air campaigns can win low-level wars, and that technology -not boots on the ground- is the key to winning to the War on Terrorism.

Think it'd piss off Arkin's buddies at Human Rights Watch and Greenpeace that he's one of the biggest advocates of Secretary Rumsfeld's failed Transformation concept?

This is what the Air Force needs to be told, folks. With the Soviet Union dissolved, they have a dozen secondary missions and no primary one. There's no big bad Bear to fight anymore, just a loosely organized confederation of platoon sized cells..... mosquitoes that the Air Force wants to kill with its cannons. They need someone to say that they're still important, so they hired Arkin to say it.

Unfortunately, despite Arkin's expert "bomb assessment," the Lebanon War proved one thing. This war is a grunt war, it can't be won with the "flexible" employment of air power, or any use of air power for that matter. It takes hearts and minds to win hearts and minds folks, something that a PFC running patrols in Mosul could tell you....but William Arkin and impressive academic resume could not.

The New Pledge

By John

Now with 60% more egalitarianism!

I pledge allegiance to the flag and my constitutional rights with which it comes. And to the diversity, in which our nation stands, one nation, part of one planet, with liberty, freedom, choice and justice for all.

Blech. Pledging allegiance to "diversity?" That doesn't make any sense to me, unless you're talking about this painfully awesome poster.

And on that note, I'm positive that the deliberate use of the word "choice" had nothing to do with abortion and everything to do with our right to choose to carry firearms and smoke in public. Right?

Right.

So besides that unbearable "Under God" line, what pissed progressives off about the old pledge?

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Harmless.

And I love references to America as "The Republic." Always have. The flag flies for the Republic, and the Republic stands for strength, justice, and liberty. Who looks at something that poignant and thinks "let's change things up a bit?"

And "one planet?" Whiskey tango foxtrot, over? I can't wrap my head around it, but there's something cosmically stupid about this line. Maybe it's because I can't stand the UN mentality, where all nations and peoples are equal.... so you get folks like Syria sitting on the human rights commission. When I pledge to the flag, to the Republic, I'm also acknowledging that a society of freedom and justice is superior to craptastic hellholes like North Korea.

Not that we're both part of "one planet."

Anyway, keep the panties untwisted.... like most progressive intiatives, this new pledge is just a fantastical concoction of some half-baked dreamer who thinks that, despite a century of failures, communism can still work if only the right people were put in charge. Some asshole will probably incorporate it into one of those lame murals that depicts all the children of the world holding hands and signing, but that's about as far as this socialist wet-dream will go.

As for me? I'll be taking it a step further and lobbying to incorporate "one solar system" instead of "one planet." Because honestly, the favorable carbon based Earth environment isn't any better than the crushing gravity and hydrogen/helium based atmosphere on Jupiter. Who are you to judge, fascist?

Yale Anti-War Noobs PWND!!!

By John

Forgive the title, I've been playing quite a bit of Halo 3 as of late.

Yale Loses Recruiting Battle

Yale Law School suffered a rare loss today in a legal battle with the Department of Defense over the rights of military recruiters to operate within the school. Yale Law had previously rejected the presence of military recruiters based on their objection to the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that bars openly gay individuals from service. While the federal government contends the university has been up to now opting out of its minimal obligations to the country’s defense, the school complains that recruiters are the only employers allowed who do not comply with its nondiscrimination policy.

The stakes for Yale in this case? The university would stand to lose $350 million a year in federal grants, nothing to shake a stick at – even for the school with the highest rate of growth in its endowment of all private universities. Yale’s Professor Robert Burt, the lead plaintiff in the case, explained Yale’s position succinctly: “We had a choice… We’re not going to bring the medical school and the whole science enterprise to its knees.”

Activists at Yale are hoping their militant anti-militarism holds water. Students plan to stage a silent protest today, as the recruiters move in for the kill – I mean, the Fall Interview Program. After all, there remains something worth fighting for at Yale law: ROTC classes are still not allowed.

If there's a debate in this country that makes me want to yank out bloody fistfuls of hair (someone else's, not mine), it's recruitment on campus.

The whole raison d’être of the "recruiters off campus" movement is to oppose Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Yeah yeah, you don't admit gays, we won't admit your recruiters...fascist pigs! I get it.

Only the military had a whole lot of nothing to do with the policy. Don't Ask, Don't Tell was mandated by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1993. And, for those of you Ivy Leaguers whose 40k a year education hasn't taught you the basics of the civil-military relationship, that means the Pentagon has zippy say in whether or not they admit gays.

Quite frankly, with the Army and Marines trying to expand as rapidly as they are, I think Ace and Gary would've have been given matching pink M4s years ago, had it been up to the brass.

So either Ivy Leaguers are too dumb/lazy to understand Don't Ask, Don't Tell, or they are knowingly manipulating the policy to mask their hatred for the US Armed Forces.

A little of both, says I.... but that's all gravy at this point anyway. Recruiters are back, and I've learned an important lesson: convictions in the Ivy League run only as deep as their pockets.

I do wonder which poor NCO draws the short straw and has to brave academia. I suggested that we reactivate Sgt. Slaughter for the mission, but nobody ever listens to my awesome ideas.

Circus Freaks

By John

It doesn't take much to effectively refute 9/11 conspiracy theories. In fact, just looking at the faces of the Truther movement can grant you more inner peace than 10 years of meditation in a Buddhist monastery.

Anti-War Film "Stuns" Venice

By John

VENICE (Reuters) -

A new film about the real-life rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers who also murdered her family stunned the Venice festival, with shocking images that left some viewers in tears.

"Redacted", by U.S. director Brian De Palma, is one of at least eight American films on the war in Iraq due for release in the next few months and the first of two movies on the conflict screening in Venice's main competition.

Inspired by one of the most serious crimes committed by American soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, it is a harrowing indictment of the conflict and spares the audience no brutality to get its message across.

De Palma, 66, whose "Casualties of War" in 1989 told a similar tale of abuse by American soldiers in Vietnam, makes no secret of the goal he is hoping to achieve with the film's images, all based on real material he found on the Internet.

"The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people," he told reporters after a press screening.

Never trust someone who sells truth with a work of fiction.

Just sayin'.

You want reality? Read milblogs.

Political Statements in Uniform

By Slab

I'm sure everyone by now is familiar with Friday's incident at Yearly Kos. Jon Soltz, a moderator for one of the panels, silenced a soldier who stood up to speak in support of the surge. Why? Because the sergeant in question was in his Class A uniform.

Jon Soltz was right.

He could have handled it better, there's no doubt of that, but according to the basic principles that the military is supposed to follow, he was in the right and the as-yet-unnamed sergeant was not. That soldier had no place attempting to make a public statement in uniform, and by doing so, not only did he violate Paragraph 4.1.1.3 of DOD Directive 1344.10 and Section j of Paragraph 1-10 of AR 670-1, but he set himself up to be silenced by the moderator. If he had attempted to make his statement while wearing civilian clothes and an Army baseball cap, for instance, and Soltz had still shut him up, then conservative bloggers could point out that the moderators were silencing dissenting viewpoints. As it is, we are left with Soltz enforcing DOD and US Army regulations, and the sergeant unable to voice his views because of his choice of attire.

Simply put, if you are a member of the Armed Forces of the United States, you do not make political statements or appear at political conventions in uniform. It does not matter if you are speaking for or against the President's policies. It is not infringement of your right to free speach, it is your responsibility as a servicemember of this great nation. One of the reasons we are "this great nation" is that our military services do not involve themselves in the political process. Individual servicemembers may involve themselves, but not while wearing their uniform, which implies official capacity.

And I've seen the argument that the convention was not political in nature. Please don't attempt to blow smoke up anyone's... well, let's just not kid ourselves. If Kos is involved, it's just as political as the Democratic National Convention. Perhaps even more so.

Some of you may have noticed that I try to keep myself more removed from politics than other milbloggers. That is because I subscribe to the viewpoint that was summed up by a character in Anton Myrer's book Once An Eagle:

When I serve my country as a soldier, I'm not going to serve her as a Democrat or as a Republican, I'm going to serve her as an American.

CAIR Cares

By John

About themselves.....more than they care about the First Amendment, apparently.

I think the first comment over at Hot Air says it all.

CAIR. Pwnd.

You guys really should watch this video.

Those dudes at CAIR? Never been a fan.

Yup

By John

I think W.Thomas Smith sums up the whole Scott Thomas affair rather nicely:

Of course, we know (and it's been said over the past few days) that no officer or NCO would tolerate this kind of behavior from a soldier like the mysterious "Scott Thomas."

But knowing Marines and soldiers as well as I do (and Jim does), I'll tell you what else would happen: If Mr. Thomas were witnessed mocking a female burn victim or running over dogs, he'd almost surely get his "a** whipped" by any number of the rank-and-file. And I'd be willing to put money on that.

Yeah, me too.

Scurrry Airplanes Return!

By John

San Frans want Blue Angels out:

SAN FRANCISCO - The annual aerial show by the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels — a San Francisco tradition dating back to 1981 that pumps millions into the local economy — is running into opposition from three local peace advocacy groups that are calling for a permanent halt to the popular Fleet Week flyover.
CodePink, Global Exchange and Veterans for Peace, Chapter 69, are working with Supervisor Chris Daly on a Board of Supervisors resolution to address concerns over the Blue Angels.

Daly acknowledged he is considering a call to halt the flyovers because, he said, “they seem dangerous and unnecessary.” Daly said he plans on introducing the resolution as early as Tuesday, but is still drafting the language. A resolution is not legally binding, but states a board position.

Which reminded me of this letter the editor from last year's Bay Area fleet week:

Editor -- Thank you, Fleet Week. My preschool-aged daughter, having heard your airplanes overhead all week, is now completely traumatized and afraid to go outside. She just heard a commercial airliner in the sky and ran inside shrieking, shaking, and trying to close all the windows and doors. We tried to have a fun family weekend enjoying free music in our park, but it was ruined by the thundering sound of those hateful airplanes overhead, forcing her (and most of the other children I saw) to throw her hands over her face and cower.

If there is ever an opportunity for me to vote on any proposition keeping this ridiculous event and huge waste of resources from marring the skies of my city again, you can bet I'll be the first in line to get it voted in.

Lex wins the discussion with:

You know, in a way - and no offense to the real people living in and about the bay area, SJBill - this would kind of be a relief. As a city, San Francisco has long ago stopped pretending that they support their military. We could stop pretending that we like San Francisco.

We don’t have to like San Francisco. We get paid to defend them. It’s our job.

The rest of the country?

We’re doing that for free.

Heh. An okay guy, Lex.

Kos is Konfused

By John

Sorry for the millionth, unoriginal iteration of swapping 'c's for 'k's when talking Kos.... it's just so hard not to, y'know?

So anyway, Jeff Emanual pointed me to this silly blog post by Markos, where he gets all huffy over the fact that military members can (and will) be disciplined for participating in political events while in uniform. It's silly because the post, a response to the disciplinary actions taken against an IRR Marine who attended an anti-war rally in uniform, is your prototypical emotional, kneejerk reaction that can only exist in the factless vacuum of the anti-war blogosphere. Kos writes:

So they'll prosecute me if I wear my Army uniforms to an anti-war protest? Really?

But that's not the point. As we've seen time and time again, we see military personnel, in uniform, all the freakin' time as backdrops to Republican pro-war events -- including with Mr. 28% -- and there haven't been any prosecutions of those folks.

Marine Cpl. Adam Kokesh has already been discharged. He has every right enshrined under the Constitution, including those of free speech and peaceful assembly.

And anyone that thinks otherwise, quite frankly, is legitimately and objectively un-American.

So there's two angles to play here. The first is what the DoD regs say about participating in political events in uniform. The second is the Kos line that Republicans "use" the military as props during political rallies.

Jeff decided to do the fact checking that didn't really interest Kos, citing the DoD regs forbidding military members from participating in this type of event. Regs that include members of the inactive ready reserve (IRR). It's a compelling and well-researched read, click here for more.

Now the fact that Republicans like Vice President Cheney and President Bush are often seen speaking at military events is true. Just like it was true for Democrats during the Clinton years. There is a stark difference between a servicemember attending a sanctioned speech at a military base and a servicemember participating in a political rally in uniform. I'd argue that having such poor knowledge of your military and the political process is un-American, but I guess I'll just write that off as conjecture.

All in all, his post is just....wrong. Not ideologically wrong....factually wrong. And it continues with our OPFOR driven-theme that much of the war punditry that you read in a given day is false, incorrect, or misleading.

Do, in large part, to guys like William Arkin and Kos.

Last Time, I Swear

By John

So William Arkin of the Washington Post decided to respond to Blackfive, Badgers Forward, John Donovan, and I after we collectively called shenanigans on his milblogger column (John Donovan was far more gracious than I'm going to be...)

So....besides spelling my four-letter first name wrong, Arkin continues to neglect actual column writing in exchange for crawling from one disasterous point to another. Which gives me plenty of ammo, even though....ugh...I really do know better. I shouldn't stoop, y'know?

But, and this is what prompted me to respond (sigh....again), he completely missed what I was saying when I responded to his column on the military bloggers conference. And he kind of twisted our words around.

My inbox has been filled with comments from Red Sox fans and MilBloggers ever since I attempted to link the two last week. I used the metaphor of sports reporting to observe that Americans would be better off if we paid even a fraction of attention to the military that we pay to baseball. Also attracting comments was my post describing the tension between the YouTube generation's expectation of Internet access and the military's need to control its own.

Red Sox fans essentially said this: Hey, baseball's interesting. As fans, we're a part of something.

MilBloggers said this: War is not fun, and we are not merely fans. In many cases, we are soldiers. The implication was that only they are qualified to comment about their endeavor.

No. Arggh. No, no, no, no....emphatically freakin' no.

My point was that stupid people should not be considered authorities on military and national security. I have no problem with Hippy Joe launching a 4 hour lecture on the role of airpower in the tactical environment, but I do want people to realize that he'd be more in his element if he were discussing the role of water bongs in the campus environment.

Here's a better example. This picture...

...prompted this response from a commenter at Prosebeforehos:

That does not look to me to be an authentic fighting man of United States military. Where is his insignia? What type of weapon is that he is carrying? His cammo pattern appears something less than genuine issue. And, I’m not expert, but his boots do not apear to be G.I. –I think this guy could be a washed up police man who just got himself a life long job working for Halibuton. Can this man’s connection to The US Military be verified?

I don't want the commenter silenced. I don't want his freedom of speech limited, restricted, or infringed upon in any way. And I welcome the fact that he's involved in the national debate. But, it's important to recognize that he is absolutely, certifiably clueless. Card-carrying clueless. The fact that he can't properly identify an American soldier has already spoken volumes on his knowledge on the Iraq War. Now look, he has a constitutional right to voice his skepticism and I recognize that... but I am missing the clause in the Constitution where it says that type of punditry is actually helpful to the national debate.

Arkin is a military idiot. He had four years of experience in a 1970s Cold War military that is so different from today's force that he may as well have spent his time in the Bolivian coast guard. His columns, -"obscene amenities" anyone?- are weekly proof of his intellectual distance from soldiers and the Armed Forces at large, and his understanding of military blogging and milbloggers is just plain embarassing.

Arkin says "as the Iraq war has made abundantly clear, our government -- and our military -- needs the input of more people, not fewer. Thankfully, the Internet is ideally suited to providing it."

In other words, he wants opinion polls to dictate the direction of the war. Thankfully, we live in a Constitutional Republic and not a pure democracy, and mob rule is decidedly not how we run our wars. We trust experts more than we trust popular opinion and trends, from government to technology to yes...the military. But I am grateful to him for making this point, because it fits in beautifully with my narrative that William Arkin is a military affairs writer who doesn't understand the most basic tenets of military affairs.

This is a classic leftist move. The anti-war movement doesn't have the backbone of military expertise that the pro-victory crowd enjoys, so they inject this "everyone's voice is equal" crap into the national debate and pretend as if that's the best way to maintain an intellectually honest exchange.

Everyone's voice is not equal. That's naive. And stupid. My opinion on orbital mechanics is not "just as good" as some NASA egghead's, I'm not more informed on economics than the faculty at Harvard Business School, and I don't know more about flying fighter jets than Lex.

So why does Arkin constantly seek to water down the opinions of the experts (soldiers and milbloggers) while elevating the militarily clueless?

Arkin Redux

By John

He's baaaaack. And hitting the milbloggers. Hard.

I've been wanting to write about the 2nd Annual MilBlog conference (I wasn't invited), and did write earlier about the brouhaha over the Pentagon's supposed new restrictions regarding blogging.

FYI, the journalists who covered the conference (NPR, CNN, WaPo, Fox News, etc) attended on their own initiative. No one was "invited," which makes me wonder why Arkin felt he merited a special invitation.

The MilBloggers got an extra boost of attention after the news about the Army's "crackdown" on blogs, with the overheated claim that the new operations security (OPSEC) and bandwidth rules cut off soldiers from their families and restricting people's freedoms. An extra boost from whom, you ask? From the mainstream media they so seemingly despise -- with various noterati of the MilBlog world being interviewed and quoted regarding the impact of the military's new rules.

As I see it, beyond the social networking and communications functions, the Milblogs have set themselves up as an anti-news media squad. The conference included many discussions of the deficiencies of mainstream press coverage of Iraq. In fact, some people actually believe that, with the availability of worldwide news on the Web and the emergence of military blogs, the Pentagon press corps and even the mainstream news media is obsolete.

No. Milbloggers have focused grievances. Like when certain papers run Abu Ghraib 50 times above the fold without running a single story on our Medal of Honor recipients. Or when they publish the details of a classified program designed to monitor and terminate the funding of terrorists who kill our troops in Iraq. Or when they use doctored photos, stringers with questionable integrity, and axe stories that are "too positive."

We don't simply "despise" the media like bunch of uneducated racists. Or like Arkin despises the military. We back-slap when the MSM gets it right, we criticize when they get it wrong. It's that simple.

But thank you to Arkin for providing us with a clear example of the type of drivel that we so forcefully counteract. Arkin was the only established MSM type to write on the conference without actually attending. It's easy to have such an uninformed opinion when you're too lazy to do the legwork, I suppose.

And even easier when your highest form of commentary is lame similes:

Which brings me back to the Red Sox game -- specifically, Section 15, where I was sitting. I couldn't help but notice that the baseball aficionados felt quite confident about their knowledge and views. Everyone had an opinion on the game; everyone was an expert.

Yeah, it was a pretty dumb analogy. Surely Arkin realizes that milbloggers aren't "fans with opinions," but rather the players on the field. Milbloggers are the one who prosecute the war, we're not in the bleachers watching like Arkin.

So I guess the only pertinent question here is: why does the Washington Post have this guy on their payroll? He's not a very effective writer, his opinions are poorly constructed, his analogies suck, and he seems like....well, kind of an idiot. He's proven that he has very little tangible knowledge of the military and national security (zero knowledge of milbloggers), he's best known for leaking sensitive information and calling our grunts "pampered," and doesn't seem to do much outside of embarrassing his parent newspaper.

Perhaps it's time for the WaPo to consider a National and Homeland Security correspondent who actually knows something about National and Homeland Security?

Other Milbloggers covering:

Badgers Forward
Blackfive and Uncle Jimbo: "We don't despise the MSM Arkin, we just despise you."
Mrs. Greyhawk
Chap

Superb Stupidity

By John

Because sometimes the nutroots hand it to you on a silver platter.

I am speechless

By Bull Nav

As a general rule, I am not so politically inclined. My training (college, the Navy, my job) is engineering. I have not studied politics extensively, such as for a degree program, but I do my best to stay informed.
However, when a congressman or senator does something that...something that...well, words escape me.
I guess "incredulous" could best describe my reaction.

WASHINGTON, May 3 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed Thursday that Congress repeal the authority it gave President Bush in 2002 to invade Iraq, injecting presidential politics into the Congressional debate over financing the war.
Mrs. Clinton’s proposal brings her full circle on Iraq — she supported the war measure five years ago — and it sharpens her own political positioning at a time when Democrats are vying to confront the White House.

I mean, does she think this is transparent to the American people? Now, I realize who this is, who this reverse carpetbagger is, this person who changes positions with the wind. But is this really the type of person to lead this country? Is this the type of person to represent this great land to the rest of the world?
Or is it just to placate the radical fringe that appears to run the Democratic party?

Now, her advisers say, a vote to withdraw authorization would make plain to antiwar and liberal Democrats that she was repudiating her 2002 vote. The hope among her aides was that demands by antiwar voters for her to apologize for her vote would be rendered moot.

Yes, I am left speechless...

The Stupid Rise Up

By John

Looks like "Little Eichmans, the sequel."

The American people, including the families of the murdered Virginia Tech innocents, have collective blood-guilt on their hands. I have not gone to jail to protest the war machine, so I am no better than they and probably a good deal worse because I have given the issue some thought. How many of those parents in the audience hearing the President’s words had elected to Congress men and women who voted for lax laws on gun ownership? How many of those parents in the audience had also voted for legislators who backed the president’s illegal invasion of Iraq? Are we, as a nation, too obtuse to grasp the connection between our “gun culture” policy at home and our militarist policy abroad that murders and mutilates human beings at every turn? Practically any one in America can buy a gun, and abroad, any dictator in the world can buy weapons made in America because we just happen to be the world’s biggest arms peddler.

What kind of a society has America become? Why do we have two-million men in our prisons? Why, in some cities, is every second or third male either in prison or out on parole? Why is the murder rate soaring in so many cities? Why is there on average more than one killing a day in a city like Philadelphia? Why are our own terrorists murdering 30,000 Americans each year and injuring tens of thousands more with rapid-fire handguns of the sort used on the Virginia Tech campus? Do we realize, speaking of terrorists, that ten times as many Americans are being killed by Americans each year as all our troops in Iraq? Osama bin Laden is everywhere in America. He has a thousand faces. They are the faces of our own dispossessed, our own poverty-stricken, our own unemployed, our own underclass, our own idolized gangsters , our own youth who grew up in front of television sets that ooze violence and blood.

Who is responsible for the killings in Iraq except the same now bereaved parents of the murdered students at Virginia Tech? It’s not that some of them voted to elect George Bush. Anyone can be deceived, particularly by a notorious liar. But when the president broke the law and invaded Iraq, violating the UN Charter, how many of them protested? Today they are upset that a young, crazed gunman has ran amok on the campus of a peaceful university, but where were they when President Bush defied the United Nations and ran amok in Iraq? Do they know, as Amnesty International reported on the same day as the Virginia Tech murders, the Middle East “is on the verge of a massive humanitarian crisis” because three-million Iraqis have been “forcibly displaced” by the war the grief-stricken Mr. Bush began? Who do the American people think made this humanitarian crisis in the Middle East if not the American people?

The same parents who weep for their children might consider that they and their neighbors are also spending a half trillion dollars a year so that the Pentagon, just over the horizon from Virginia Tech, can wage a war that is snuffing out the lives of children of other parents just like their own. Thousands of Virginians work for the military-industrial complex. They work for the Pentagon. They work for defense contractors. They work for the Central Intelligence Agency. They are in the business of killing directly or indirectly, yet how many of them are haunted by the consequences of their “jobs” in their dreams at night?

All across America, people who attend church and regard themselves as “good” people, such as the bereaved at Virginia Tech, are working in the plants that make atomic bombs and warplanes and napalm and cluster bombs and are creating new, demonical designs of germ warfare and space-based weapons so vile and horrible they defy description.

Vomit-inducing. Seriously, it's that bad. Reminds me of what me and my "angry neighbors" are fighting. The ideology, this corrupt, horrible ideology. And stupid. Incredibly stupid. Incurably stupid.

I love this dude's morals: "Sure, the Virginia Tech shooting was horrible and evil. But guess what, Mr. Churchy McChurch-goer....you're no better."

Really?

There's nothing worse than being insulted by some idiot beatnik who tries to inject iambic pentameter into his writing. Can't you just see him imagining that he's inspiring millions with this crap? Up on the podium, affecting all of us warmongers in some deeply profound way? As if his lame Socratic approach is really designed just to make us think.

Sherwood lives in a cosmos of his own mental construction, where up is down, down is up. The people who he so callously indicts live in the real world. And in that real world, going to church isn't the same as killing 32 people. I know that. You know that. Hell, most thinking people know that. But what pisses me off about this clown is that he represents a large demographic of people who don't know that.

Nor will they ever. You can't fix stupid, y'know?

It should be noted that the extreme right isn't much better than the extreme left.

The families of those killed in the Virginia Tech massacre may not be able to grieve in peace at the funerals of those they lost. An anti-gay religious group known for protesting at the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq is planning on appearing at services for those killed on Monday as well.

The Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), which is not affiliated with any national Baptist organization, announced plans to protest at victims’ funerals only hours after 32 people were killed in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. They also may protest at other events on the Virginia Tech campus.

The organization, founded and led by Fred Phelps, believes the United States has condemned itself to destruction by accepting homosexuality and other “sins of the flesh.” Phelps’ daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, said the Virginia Tech teachers and students who died on Monday brought their fate upon themselves by not being true Christians.

“The evidence is they were not Christian. God does not do that to his servants,” Phelps-Roper said. “You don’t need to look any further for evidence those people are in hell.”

I don't know what book she's been reading, but Mark 12:28 says: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' "The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

So these guys are kinda dumb. It's not a matter of interpretation or definition either. There's no passage that says "you shall hate sinners, gays, and non-Christians will all your heart."

Look I'm not trying to spark a religious debate here. Just pointing out that these idiots at Westboro are favoring a small series of Old Testament passages while ignoring the single, driving tenant of Christianity, the sum of all scripture and all the prophets (thank you Lex).

Look if it seems like I'm invoking words such as "stupid, dumb, idiotic" a bit more than usual, that's because there's simply no other way to describe people like these. Stupid, dumb, idiotic.....all easy ways of pointing out a glorious absence of intelligence. No whether you want to blame that on their brains or their ideologies is up to you.

I think it's a little of both.

Code Pink on the Airwaves

By John

Lame.

No, the troops aren't toys to play with. Nor are they propaganda pieces.

These are the same shrill womyn who feel that Walter Reed Army Medical Center is an appropriate venue for protesting. The type who turn their backs on soldiers, mock their accents, and manipulate them for their own selfish political desires.

So forgive me if I find their appeal to America's heartstrings a little...well manipulative. Code Pink is the PETA of the anti-war movement, a group who offers little political clout beyond a handful of melodramatic media stunts each year. Credibility. It counts.

Hotel Tango: Allah, who writes:

Utterly predictable after the first second or so. You can’t expect profundity in half a minute, but a little originality would be welcome; what you’re getting here instead is the thousandth iteration of a meme that’s been popular in anti-war thinking since toy soldiers were invented. Presumably it’s simply a commentary on Bush being cavalier about troop deaths, although with Mother Sheehan’s outfit you never know — they may mean to imply he’s actually getting his jollies from all the fighting.

Yah, and then there's that whole "volunteer" concept, something Code Pink has never been able to wrap their minds around. The four year anniversary of the fall of Baghdad is significant in ways outside of purely historical context, it marks the end of a soldier's initial four-year service commitment. Meaning, our current crop of fighting men either volunteered after OIF, or reenlisted to continue the mission.

Because the Last One Was So Effective....

By John

Gitmo Inmates Resume Hunger Strike

MIAMI — Terrorism suspects at a maximum-security prison at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have resumed a mass hunger strike to protest the conditions of their confinement, detainees' lawyers said Sunday.

The on-again, off-again action involving at least 20 prisoners over the last few months started after more than 170 of the 385 men currently detained at Guantanamo were moved to the newest and harshest facility, Camp 6.

Guess it's on again. Standard operating procedure is to force-feed 'em until they knock it off, using an IV feeding system. Which sounds reasonable enough to me. But, believe it or not, this "won't eat my peas" crap actually works with some folks here in the States.

Firedoglake:

No government has the moral right to treat any human being this way. Under George Bush and Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Libby, Addington, Yoo, Hayes, et al, our government has become immoral, inhumane and lawless, and it needs to be changed. And those responsible should be held accountable. Enough.

Treat them what way? Soccer balls, 3-square Islam friendly meals a day, and board games? Forgive me if I don't buy into the dramatics here. Mistreatment would be if we were purposefully starving these guys. We're not...they're starving themselves. And they're not very good at it either, judging by the the last great cry for attention in 06.

So essentially, the inmates are sending a message to ideologues who are already on their side. People like the crew at Firedoglake, who have already made clear that their well-being isn't quite the goal, but rather bringing down BUSCHO! and his band of thugs.

But hey, Firedoglake has said ENOUGH! And, based on their past successes, like when they got Ned Lamont elected, The Path to 9/11 pulled off the air, and President Bush impeached, all the bad guys down at Gitmo have to do is play the waiting game.

Anti-War Bloggers Update Us on the Surge

By John

AMERICAblog:

Fulfilling the Wish of the Electorate, Democrats Send a Message to Bush About Iraq.

All through the Iraq debate, Republicans keep warning us about emboldening the terrorists in Iraq. Not sure how much more emboldened those terrorists in Iraq can get. Four years after George Bush told us the mission was accomplished, those terrorists in Iraq continue to engage the most powerful military in the world. That seems to have really emboldened them.

McCain and Lieberman keep trying to prop up Bush and his failed war policy by claiming progress where there is none.

Just like to point you to my Townhall column from a few weeks ago. You know, the one titled "They Know So Much That Isn't So?" AMERICAblog got an honorable mention. Just sayin, is all.

Message sending. That's pretty much the business these days isn't it? As opposed to floating legislation that actually has chance of passing. Non-binding resolutions and timelines. Off to a flying stop, methinks.

Is the surge working? Hell, I don't know. I've heard good things, I've heard bad things. But anyone who tells you "no progress is being made" is trying to sell you something, not deliver an honest evaluation on the ground sit out there.

Unless, of course, you believe that John Avarosis of AMERICAblog knows something that General Petraeus doesn't.

**Update** Here's a more honest assessment, from The Tank:

The truth is certainly closer to CNN's Ware. I don't go venturing outside the IZ when I'm in Baghdad so I can't tell for sure—I'm in Fallujah. However, things are getting much better from what I hear from the Iraqis and us. I hear LTG Petraeus has been out and about walking around Baghdad and Ramadi. Despite the protection, that's gutsy stuff!

LTG Petraeus is VERY well respected by the Iraqis and the troops. One retired General told me "Solomon would have a tough time squaring away Iraq." Thankfully, LTG Petraeus is on that level of competence.

Seems somewhat more....responsible, doesn't it?

Another Armchair General

By John

This chick kills me. Just kills me. From, where else? The Los Angeles Times:

Polls show the American public — and the troops themselves — to be deeply critical of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq and concerned about the war's devastating effect on the American military. We've watched the situation in Iraq go from bad to worse, from worse to worst and then from worst to unthinkably awful, as "insecurity" morphed into "sectarian violence," then into chaos and civil war.

The "war's devastating effect on the American military?" You mean wars can devastate militaries? Get out. Only this one isn't. Devastating, that is. I won't play the numbers game, it's lame, but on the off chance that she feels a sudden, striking urge to educate herself, she can google casaulties of past wars. Devastating. Yeesh, could we be any more dramatic?

We've seen the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq roughly tripled since the 2004 election. We've seen the war in Iraq fuel anti-U.S. sentiment worldwide; we've seen copycat suicide bombings increase in Afghanistan; we've seen the Iraq conflict further inflame tensions with Iran and throughout the Middle East; we've seen hostile states around the globe emboldened by the image of the U.S. caught in a quagmire; we've seen Al Qaeda regroup; we've seen Iraq become a top training ground for aspiring terrorists from all over.

Read More »

Throwing Down

By John

Kevin O'Meara, the same guy who launched a one-man campaign to hate on The Blog of War, has come after our own beloved Lightning. Responding to Lightning's "A Mercenary's Perspective" post, O'Meara writes:

Talking to these people is like talking to my dog... they look and probably turn their head a little but cannot understand anything. Here one of the wingnuts tries to prove I was wrong by saying the soldiers work for the "populace" by showing how brilliant he is. He says, "No, I do not work for you, I work for the elected officials". Well, duh, no shit. But the key word in this statement is "elected". Who the F do you think elects them? The Populace.. therefore, you work for the populace.

Geez.. is this guy really trusted with guns?

I guess Lightning's comments on the ins-and-outs of how a federal republic operates was lost on Kevin. You know, like the oh-so-small detail that officials elected by the populace chose to send our troops into Iraq. O'Meara's contention is that since the troops are mandated to do the bidding of the American public, and opinion polls show disapproval with the war in Iraq, the troops should just up and come home. Or at the very least keep their traps shut.

Lightning's contention was, in short, "not till Congress tells them to," a point that O'Meara seems to have a tough time wrapping his head around.

This guy has given Matt at Blackfive all kinds of grief for some time now. I actually think he's a pretty smart guy, but he's an interesting case study in how doctrinal adherence to an ideology can make you stupid.

Read his blog, and his comments at Amazon under The Blog of War, to see what I'm talking about.

Waste Products: Why Hippies Aren't Just Harmless Pranksters

By Lt Col P

These two fine young citizens cost the city of Boston a considerable amount of trouble from a so-called "guerrilla marketing" campaign.

The estimate of the cost is at $500k, not to mention time and effort spent by emergency services that could have been used elsewhere, and the inconvenience to thousands of normal (and normal-LOOKING) people going about their business.

The real cost these waste products just hit us with is allowing the adversary to observe a multi-site emergency response in a major US city-- routes, reaction times, procedures, equipment and personnel. Think about it. It's like what we used to do to Iraq, prior to 2003-- launch air sorties that looked like a real attack, then have the planes turn aside at the last moment, just so we could gather the intel on how the Iraqis reacted. Somehow I don't think these two yahoos will understand that. Hell, I don't even think they know what day of the week it is. Turds.

WWII Moonbattery

By Lt Col P

For no reason at all, except that it's fairly amusing*, and that I suppose it illustrates that's there's nothing new under the sun, I'd like to share something I came across in John Masters's classic about the second Chindit campaign, The Road Past Mandalay. He and his brigade have just been forced to withdraw from their stronghold, "Blackpool," after a vicious fight against the Japanese deep inside Burma. Exhausted, soaked and hungry, they lie up for the night. Masters is about to go to sleep when a member of his comm section comes right up to him and says, "I think this campaign is a disgrace... I mean why we're here. To save the profits of the oil companies."

Pissed off, he wakes up.

Read More »

The Latest Truther Moonbattery

By John

Pinch has got it and mmmm, it is stewed to perfection!

Adios Bay Area JROTC

By John

This has been my quote of the week, I think. Ronald Reagan: It's not that liberals are ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so."

San Francisco Chronicle:

"We don't want the military ruining our civilian institutions," said Sandra Schwartz of the American Friends Service Committee, an organization actively opposing JROTC nationwide. "In a healthy democracy ... you contain the military. You must contain the military."

And was the San Fransico school board's justification for robbing kids of a wonderful extra-curricular activity, the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. "They know so much that isn't so...." Here, here Ronnie. I knew my degree in history would serve me somewhere. I can't help but to think of all the flourishing democracies in history. The Greek Republics, Rome, the British Empire, America, all had powerful militaries. In a succesful democracy, you mustn't contain the military, you must embrace it. Be a part of it.

Citizens must go beyond supporting a Republic with a simple vote. They must treasure it, value it, and when the time comes, pick up a sword and fight for it.

The military should never become isolated from the rest of society. Never. That causes democracies to fall, not thrive. Shame on San Francisco.

"They know so much that isn't so."

Indeed.

Not Funny

By John

I'm no fan of Keith Olberman, but this giddy page six garbage from the New York Post is absolutely ridiculous:

Power Puff Spooks Keith (September 27, 2006) -- MSNBC loudmouth Keith Olbermann flipped out when he opened his home mail yesterday. The acerbic host of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" was terrified when he opened a suspicious-looking letter with a California postmark and a batch of white powder poured out. A note inside warned Olbermann, who's a frequent critic of President Bush's policies, that it was payback for some of his on-air shtick. The caustic commentator panicked and frantically called 911 at about 12:30 a.m., sources told The Post's Philip Messing. An NYPD HazMat unit rushed to Olbermann's pad on Central Park South, but preliminary tests indicated the substance was harmless soap powder. However, that wasn't enough to satisfy Olbermann, who insisted on a checkup. He asked to be taken to St. Luke's Hospital, where doctors looked him over and sent him home. Whether they gave him a lollipop on the way out isn't known. Olbermann had no comment.

That's a pretty classless move, coming from a paper that was the victim of a real anthrax attack five years ago.

Even though I've been vaccinated against the stuff, it's a sure bet that I'd be insisting on a checkup too. Grow up, NYP.

The Plot Thickens

By John

Ah yes...

Israeli-US plot behind pope's remarks: Iran hardline press

Iranian hardline newspapers said there were signs of an Israeli-US plot behind remarks by Pope Benedict XVI that linked Islam to violence and created a wave of anger across the Muslim world.
The daily Jomhuri Islami said Israel and the United States -- the Islamic republic's two arch-enemies -- could have dictated the comments to distract attention from the resistance of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah to Israel's offensive on Lebanon.

"The reality is that if we do not consider Pope Benedict XVI to be ignorant of Islam, then his remarks against Islam are a dictat that the Zionists and the Americans have written (for him) and have submitted to him."

Indeed. My reaction:

Read More »

Ignoring the Wolf

By John

I'm always on the lookout for evidence that left wing blogs take terrorism seriously. Only fair to give them the benefit of the doubt, methinks.

That said, I found one left wing blog that decided to address the Islamic world's collective temper tantrum over Pope Benedict's "slightest of slight."

AMERICAblog:

Who ever would have guessed that attacking the faith of a billion people would cause such a commotion? He's a uniter, not a divider. Oh, that's the other guy, but same, same. They both seem oblivious to the modern world and stuck in the dark ages with their thinking. Now the Pope is being criticized for his half hearted attempt to skirt around the issue instead of just apologizing. Worse yet, he could not even do that himself and passed the message through others. There's real leadership for the world. How bold. Too bad the Vatican doesn't have press conferences like other politicians have so someone could ask him how he thought those words would help bridge the religions.

Great. Not only is it the Vatican's fault, they managed to inject some Bush Derangement Syndrome in their commentary as well.

This lapse of judgment is striking. And telling. And unnerving. We need all Americans on board for this global fight against militant Islam. And yet, we cannot rely on the support of the anti-war crowd even when cheap thugs respond to the tiniest of offenses with the most terrible of crimes: murdering nuns and torching churches. Civilized society has barbarians at the gates, yet the towns folk would rather blame the gatekeeper than the invading hordes. Or tell us the Barbarians aren't there.

Good grief, if there was ever a time to condemn militant Islam....

Friendly Advice

By John

If you are going to protest at an airshow....

Do NOT use one of the Air Force's new 120 million dollar stealth fighters as a soapbox.

Have it on good authority that military security police meted out some justice in response, and -as a result- the protest was very short lived indeed.

Read More »

Conspiracy Cranks

By John

New York Post --

Feb. 7, 2005, I became a member of the Bush/Halliburton/Zionist/CIA/New World Order/Illuminati conspiracy for world domination. That day, Popular Mechanics, the magazine I edit, hit newsstands with a story debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories. Within hours, the online community of 9/11 conspiracy buffs - which calls itself the "9/11 Truth Movement" - was aflame with wild fantasies about me, my staff and the article we had published. Conspiracy Web sites labeled Popular Mechanics a "CIA front organization" and compared us to Nazis and war criminals.

For a 104-year-old magazine about science, technology, home improvement and car maintenance, this was pretty extreme stuff. What had we done to provoke such outrage?

Research.

Read the whole thing.

The Troll Plot Thickens....

By John

When trolling milblogs isn't enough, troll stories about milblogs.

Dallas Observer:

Your article on military blogs ("Other Sides of the Story," by Jesse Hyde, August 3) never mentioned a dirty little secret: Most of them routinely censor dissenters. If you don't believe me, then try consistently offering a contrary voice on, say, Blackfive, one of the blogs praised by your publication.

....

The ostensible reason for bannings, regardless of a site's orientation, will be that you are a "troll," a catch-all term applied by all Internet ideologues to those who disagree with their slant or their specifics. A handful of the so-called "milblogs" don't censor dissent, but they are a tiny exception to the rule. The others act as a far-right-wing auxiliary to the Republican Party's version of events in Iraq and elsewhere.

Besides the hypocrisy involved in the breast-beating about "freedom" abroad while stifling debate on their sites, the so-called milbloggers--many of whom do not serve and never have served--give a false impression of sentiment within the military.

....

The media shouldn't be so quick to embrace "milblogs" as the voice of the boots on the ground. They are not. They are the voice of the Republican Party inside of the United States, relentlessly pushing propaganda and doing everything they can to enforce a hawkish orthodoxy.

William Wilson

Seattle

William WIlson?? Could this be beloved OPFOR troll "WW?" A quick locater search of WW's IP address, 71.197.131.56, gets us.... you guessed it! Seattle, Washington!

I'm almost proud of WW for taking his paranioa to the next level. Clearly our resident troll isn't going to let the "voices of the Republican party" trample on his first amendment right, or his determination to expose the puppet strings that trace directly from Karl Rove's evil dungeon office to the common milblogger.

I know, I'm feeding. But I digress.

I'll say it one last time, since Willy seems to think that the entire legitimacy of the Constitution rests precariously on his ability to insult OPFOR commenters. Moderating comments on a private website is NOT illegal, it is NOT a violation of freedom of speech, and is NOT some evil conspiracy to silence dissent, no matter what the voices in Willy's head tell him.

/end rant.

Hotel Tango Milblogging.com

A Modest Proposal on Trolls

By John

Trolls. We've got em. Three, to be precise.

So I thought I'd take the opportunity to clarify our Official OPFOR Doctrine on Trolls and Trolling. To make this pseudo-official, here's the Wikipedia definition of an internet troll:

...the characterising feature of trolling is the perception of intent to disrupt a community in some way. Inflammatory, sarcastic, disruptive or humorous content is posted, meant to draw other users into engaging the troll in a fruitless confrontation. The greater the reaction from the community the more likely the user is to troll again, as the person develops beliefs that certain actions achieve his/her goal to cause chaos.

Now read the commentary of OPFOR troll "WW" or "Willy Snout" on the Syria Blusters post:

Oh yes, George W. Bush and his final act of desertion. What will the knee-jerk right-wing liar followers say? What will Faux News and Bill O'Leilly say? We know that none of you believe in accountability or personal responsibility, so who will you blame the defeat on? Cindy Sheehan? The New York Times? Death rays from outer space?

Fits the definition no? Old Willy is on strike number 2. Being the baseball fan that I am, I allow 3 strikes before sending the troll's IP address packing. When I clarified this perfectly reasonable policy in an email to OPFOR troll "Social Justice," he replied:

typical of right wingofascists to kill differing opinions. What? You don't like ovoices that don't fall into lock step with Booosh and his gang of criminals? Sheep.

Let me be perfectly clear here. This is me and Charlie's private blog, not a block on Pennslyvania Avenue. Keeping comments clean, clear, and insult-free for readers is NOT some sort of grand offense against the Constitution or the First Amendment. I'm not ashamed of taking action to ensure that OPFOR remains a forum that preserves and encourages a responsible and respectable discussion, and doesn't spiral downward into sophmoric name calling disguised as political discourse. If you're looking for that in a blog, go visit the Daily Kos.

As for differing opinions, I welcome them. Clarification below the fold.

Read More »

And in Comes the Hate Mail....

By John

One of the downsides of being published in a nationally syndicated magazine is that your piece becomes a magnet for the unstable. I received dozens of positive emails re: my article on academics vs. ROTC, but check out some of the hate mail that has since graced my inbox....

Pat F writes-

Your premise and thesis concerning the service gap was laughable. To blame the liberal \"intelligensia\" for what you argue is a growing (not existing) service gap is so full of holes you should be embarrassed to pander it to a wide audience. If you want to delve into some real \"stroking of society\'s underbelly for political gain\" why don\'t you take a look at the Bush/Republican Administrations (with your help) continual and perputual use of the term \"war\" . . . and actually going to war in Iraq for political gain. You use the term \"war\" as it by just saying it . . . the nation should cease any sort of discussion on the merits or lack of merits of the important decisions the nation has made and needs to make.

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Anti-War Logic

By John

Firedoglake, one of the most profane and vicious of the liberal anti-war blogs, has a big problem with G-Dub using naughty words to describe the terrorist group Hezbollah.

Using vulgar language to describe Republicans, conservatives, and those who support the war is still fair game, however.

Army Officer Refuses to Fight

By Charlie

From the Cindy Sheehan file of "Suddenly Famous Anti-War Icon of the Month," now comes LT Ehren Watada, an Army officer who has up-and-decided that the war in Iraq is illegal, and therefore he doesn't think he should fight it.

Too bad that's not how things work. Junior officers don't just get to pick and choose the orders they follow, and you aren't always dealt the hand of cards you want. Sucking it up and driving on, completing the mission, and taking care of your soldiers are what being a good officer is all about. This guy seems to have forgotten that:

First Lt. Ehren K. Watada didn't set out to defy the Army and the order sending him to Iraq.

But Watada, who turns 28 today, said he learned more about the war and the rationale for fighting it, and the same principles he was taught in the Army — honor, integrity, sacrifice and courage to do the right thing — now have him facing a court-martial for refusing his deployment orders.

In January, the Honolulu man sent a letter to his brigade commander at Fort Lewis, Wash., saying he was "wholeheartedly" opposed to the continued war in Iraq, and the "deception" used to wage it.

He asked to resign his commission, but the request was rejected.

"I believe so strongly in this cause that I would sit in prison or die for that belief,"

Rock on. If this guy would have left it at that, I would have called him a coward and driven on. BUT, in this day and age, you can't get any press without comparing American soldiers (the very ones he serves with -no less) to Nazis:

I will not subvert the Army, but I will not go along with the opinion that what we are doing (in Iraq) is right or that I am fulfilling my duty. Would the executioners of Auschwitz have been any more justified at Nuremburg?"

Showing that he is the master of the obvious, Watada also had this to add:

"...I know that my case has brought a lot of attention and scrutiny on me by my superiors. Also, I'm probably very unpopular, if not the most unpopular person on Fort Lewis..."

Our military would be in sorry shape if individual soldiers got to simply say "no" to going out on a patrol, delivering supplies, returning fire down alleyways, or deploying in the first place. This guy isn't a "hero" for "standing up for what he believes in." He signed a contract, and whether he agrees with the war or not, it's now his job to lead men in combat. Failing to report for that duty isn't just failing the nation, the Army, and his unit -it's failing the soldiers beneath him. Selling out your boys to save your own skin is an age old act of weak-willed spinelessness -it's nothing new or noteworthy.

Been There, Done That

By John

Hawkings Says Humans Must go to Space

Of course some folks are already there.

More Shock Sleaze

By John

Shock Mag has burned Michael Yon not once, but twice, in the past month. First for stealing his famous photo of an American soldier cradling a dying Iraqi girl, second for altering the terms of the legal agreement that was to resolve the dispute.

Mike is understandably upset, and has sounded the trumpets to battle.

As it turns out, there's quite a bit that you can do to help. Please visit Mike's place for more.

**Update** Kevin and Greg from the widely lauded Pundit Review Radio program will be interviewing Mike tomorrow evening on WRKO Boston. Hear it from the horse's mouth Sunday at 8pm est.

Kos Kids Reax to Al-Zarqawi's Death

By John

Kos kommenters confuse me:

The right way to handle this would have been to say nothing ... "bombing attack killed some insurgents ..." Instead, this foolish glee will help make him a martyr ... and, yet again, we have a 'major milestone' ... 'major step forward' ... and such which may -- or may -- not have real impact on what is going on in Iraq.Did Zarqawi really matter as individual ... or will there be a Spartacus-type moment with tens now stating "I am Zarqawi ..."

But, again, believe BushCo blew this one in how they're handling it ... any surprise?

Greyhawk says: "Guess it sucks to be a progressive today."

Betraying an Oath

By John

In late 2003, LT Ehren Watada swore the following oath:

"I, Ehren Watada, having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God."

In resposne to Lt Watada's refusal to deploy to Iraq, John Donovan wrote:

Let us assume that Lieutenant Watada is sincere. We owe him that much.

Bull. I owe Watada an ounce of Jack and a pint of shit. He selfishly placed his own petty politics above the most sacred of vows, a sin that all the sincerity in the world cannot wash away. By violating that oath, Watada has cheapened its meaning and violated its purpose.

Worse, to justify his desecration of the oath of office, Watada has claimed that Iraq is an illegal war. Thus, by Watada's logic, all officers who faithfully discharged their duties are war criminals.

What Watada did, or plans to do, is dishonorable. Period, the end. He has dishonored himself and he has dishonored the uniform. And his will serve time in jail for his transgressions.

Personally, I hope he's busted to private and deployed straight to the Iraqi theater for convoy duty.

Michael Moore Sued

By John

Iraq War vet suing Moore for $85 million.

A double-amputee Iraq-war vet is suing Michael Moore for $85 million, claiming the portly peacenik recycled an old interview and used it out of context to make him appear anti-war in "Fahrenheit 9/11." Sgt. Peter Damon, 33, who strongly supports America's invasion of Iraq, said he never agreed to be in the 2004 movie, which trashes President Bush. In the 2003 interview, which he did at Walter Reed Army Hospital for NBC News, he discussed only a new painkiller the military was using on wounded vets. "They took the clip because it was a gut-wrenching scene," Damon said yesterday. "They sandwiched it in. [Moore] was using me as ammunition."

Moore would have been better off interviewing Jesse Macbeth.

Hotel Tango to Glenn.

Protestors Learn About Pepperspray

By John

"Before pepperspray, the mob was unruly; afterwards....not so much."

Get Out the Tinfoil

By John

The ever paranoid Alternet on the top ten signs of the impending US police state. Couldn't find one of the ten that was particularly convincing.

The Alternet website, by the way, strongly advocates Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Just sayin'...

DD-214 Forgery

By John

The plot thickens, when it should be fading away. Now fake ranger and real anti-war activist Jesse MacBeth has posted an alledged Form DD-214, the army's official separation/discharge form on a MySpace account.

Allah Pundit has more at Hot Air.

The form appears legit, at least after a cursory look. The language is correct (11 Bravo is the proper army speciality code for those branching into the infantry), and smaller items like the date are written in the proper military format.

But, like Jesse, the discharge paperwork comes apart after relatively minor scruntiny.

Here's why the form is bogus:

-Form attaches Jesse to BCTB 2D BN 47THIN CO D TR TC, which is a Fort Benning basic training brigade (BCTB is an ancronym for basic combat training brigade). Means one of two things: Jesse was an instructor, or a recruit.

-Time in service is listed as roughly a month and a half, which pretty much answers the instructor or recruit question.

-Misspelling on "ranger qualified."

-Box 14 for military education lists "none." An army ranger, one with combat experience no less, would have a minimum his basic training class, Ranger school class, advanced infantry school, jump school, etc listed.

-Discharge code reads JGA. 30 second Google search gives us the full translation for the JGA "reason for discharge" code: pregnancy.

-Font in boxes 11 and 13 (speciality and decorations, respectively) are different than form's standard font.

-Botton left box has some noticeable profanity. Not sure if that was a message to the milbloggers, from Jesse with love.

If Jesse was indeed a boot-camp dropout, he would have easy access to this form. You see, these DD-214s are often used as methods of verifying medical discharge from military service to potential employers/background investigators. Dishonorable discharge is a frequent disqualifier to careers in the civilian world, so the military makes the forms readily available to medical washouts for verification purposes.

This form makes Macbeth's story fairly easy to deconstruct. Jesse, as a boot camp dropout, would have an official DD-214 listening his training brigade (check), reason for discharge (check), duty station (check), name, address, and social (check, check, check). Since he made no real progress in the army, boxes listing any sort of decorations, education, combat experience, etc would be blank. With blank boxes 11 and 13, one could write just about anything in the free space, which is why the font in those boxes on Jesse's form is different from the font on the rest of the paperwork. I'm also 90% certain that forging official DoD documents is illegal.

I think Jesse just put the final nail in his coffin. In the meantime, go do something meaningful for memorial day, as there are plenty of real troops out there deserving of our appreciation and gratitude.

**Update** SMASH has more, plus a sharper copy of the form.

**Update 2** Uncle Jimbo:

Is this our little clown's discharge paperwork?

The answer is EL NO! The first and disqualifying lameness is Ranger Qualified Qualifyed under primary specialty, misspelled and inappropriate for that block.

I am calling the game there and I am sure we will have 71 Limas galore clerk debunking this pathetic rag.

And I speak as a serial document forger, OMG I shudder to think at the vast quantity of leave papers, and liberty passes and badges I made over the years to further the cause of freedom, justice and the American Way.

Michael Yon Ripped Off

By John

And not by just anyone, Yon's famous photo of an American soldier and dying Iraqi girl was taken by one of the vilest of the vile print tabloids.

Michael writes:

John,
This horrible magazine, launching this Memorial Day weekend, shows photos of our wounded soldiers and is very anti-military. They indicate that I gave them this photo. I did NOT and never would have. This is flagrant copyright violation.....

Well, no one ever accused the tabloids OR the anti-war crowd of being classy. This is disgraceful on so many levels it's nauseating. I really wish Mike didn't have to constantly fight these battles for the rights to his own intellectual property (he fought -and won- a lengthy battle with the Army for the same photograph last year).

Blackfive has been all over the story. Matt included the following contact information for Shock Magazine:

The number for HFM is (212) 767-6000. Email Shock at shock@neodata.com and inbox@shocku.com.

The offending cover...

Here's some "shocking" reading for Shock Magazine, the US code on copyright infringement.

Please help Mike out. Let Shock Magazine exactly how you feel about copyright violations, and trashy, thieving tabloids as well.

**Update** Michelle is also pressing the Shock Mag clowns.

**Update 2** Shock seems to be moving foward with the issue. Link has a comments section.

Meanwhile, Mike responds...

Tire Not. Engage.

By John

My friend Steve Schippert of Threats Watch had some choice words for our domestic anti-war politicos earlier today.

Why is the defense of this nation a political issue at all? There are those who will argue that it is the manner in which we defend ourselves that is at issue.

That, my friends, is a convoluted disingenuous sheen of reason upon the unreasonable.

A former Attorney General currently vociferously defends a mass murdering dictator deposed by our own forces. An icon of the self-loathing anti-American academic Left, Noam Chomsky, embraces Hizballah, the chief beneficiary of Iran's terror export, and condemns the War on Terror as bigotry wrapped in fiction. A former Vice President travels to the home of fifteen 9/11 hijackers and professes that Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" by America and its sitting president and held in "unforgivable" conditions.

These are not arguments of the manner in which to defend America. These are sycophantic rantings of whether to defend her. The flood of emotions in disbelieving reaction range from anger and rage to depression and grief.

We dare not rest as the most important front of the War on Terror and for the very survival of Western Civilization lies not upon the sands of distant shores, but in our own common discourse. The most important battlegrounds are around our dinner tables and in intelligent and persuasive common sense discussion among our peers, seeking the discomfort of battle and the very defense of defense rather than the comfort and unproductive endeavor of agreement among friends.

The line has been clearly drawn. Tire not. Engage.

Beautiful. The War on Terror isn't gay marriage or stem cell research or abortion. It isn't a topic that should be debated during high school forensics matches. We have a category here at Op For called "One Team, One Fight." Charlie and I are constantly searching for examples of one America, one war, one fight. It's how things should be, but aren't. There shouldn't even be a need for a category that recognizes something Americans should be doing in the first place.

Steve ended on a positive note and I agree. Ignore petty politics, fight the good fight, tire not and engage.

Ranger Fraud

By John

This guy is a total fake. Disgraceful.

This same imposter crap happened during the Vietnam War, only back then they got away with it. Today it's impossible, due in large part to the milbloggers.

More coverage:
Hot Air
Blackfive
SMASH
Milblogs
CDR Salamander

South Korean Youths: We Want Our Protectors Out!

By Charlie

PYEONGTAEK, South Korea -- Thousands of students and civic activists scuffled with police yesterday as they tried to approach the site of a new U.S. military base to protest expansion plans, but no major clashes occurred.

More than 4,000 anti-U.S. activists tussled with police near the site in Pyeongtaek, about 60 km south of Seoul, but couldn't break through a barricade blocking the road to the base site.

When reached for comment, Kim Jong Il twiddled his fingers and whispered "excellent..."

More Patriotism from the Anti-War Left

By John

How many times have you heard "we support the troops, but not the war?" How many times have you believed it?

Here's more proof that the anti-war movement is disguising their hatred with PC happiness. In an interview with the drummer of the band Godsmack, Jay Babcock of Arthur magazine repeatedly accused percussionist Sully Erna of the vilest of crimes: supporting the troops.

Babcock's biggest beef was that Godsmack songs were used in military recruitment ads.

Dean Esmay called the interview "bizzare." I'd say it goes a step beyond that...

JAY: You were telling me how powerful your music was, and what age the people are that listen to it, and you must have thought, 'Well the Navy sure thought it was useful,' so you tell me.

SULLY: Hey, listen. The Navy thought.... It's the same reason why wrestlers work out to the music, and extreme motocross riders listen to the music and do what they do. It's ENERGETIC music. It's very ATHLETIC. People feel that they get an adrenaline rush out of it or whatever, so, it goes with whatever's an extreme situation. But I doubt very seriously that a kid is going to join the Marines or the US Navy because he heard Godsmack as the underlying bed music in the commercial. They're gonna go and join the Navy because they want to jump out of helicopters and fuckin' shoot people! Or protect the country or whatever it is, and look at the cool infra-red goggles.

JAY: You said to MTV, "We're not a very political band but we're supportive of the U.S. military and how they approach things."

SULLY: Listen. Someone turned that around. I never said "and how they approach things."

The interview was then fawned over by HuffPo writer Howard Klein, who opposes recruitment "into the Bush Regime's war-profits-schemes." His words, not mine.

The anti-war left's position on military recruitment is the absolute pinnacle of elitist snobbery and condescension. They exhaust themselves trying to find outside causes that "forced" or "tricked" young men and women into signing up. It's never about service, it's never about sacrifice. To the elites, military service means that you will either be killed or be a killer, and thus successful recruitment efforts are the equivilant of sentencing kids to the gallows or turning them into faceless goverment murder machines.

This latest snafu is a perfect example of the ill-informed, paranoid hype that the anti-war movement thrives off of, just another situation where fear has to be fought with fact.

Open invitation to Jay Babcock and Howard Klein, they can contact Charlie or myself anyday, anytime to discuss why we chose to serve. I can guarentee you it wasn't because of a Godsmack song. These clowns clearly need assistance in understanding the military, and I'm just the man to help them.

Hotel Tangos to Dean's World and Murdoc.

More Hollywood Brilliance

By John

We should really make "More Hollywood Brillance" a recurring feature. These clowns give us more material than we know what to do with.

The latest.

Movie star JAKE GYLLENHAAL has shocked American Gulf War veterans by joking they did nothing but "masturbate" during their time in the desert in 1991. The cheeky 25-year-old stars in JARHEAD, a movie exposing the US soldiers' lack of combat in the Middle Eastern conflict. He said, "The US soldiers were sent to the desert for 122 days and they sat in the same tent and did nothing, except a little too much masturbating."

Opposed to Gyllenhaal, who was saving orphans and curing cancer at the time.

Ain't Gonna Study War No More!

By Charlie

Via Malkin:

Three people were apprehended this afternoon by police after pouring paint on an Army recruiting station near the University of Minnesota during an antiwar demonstration.

For the life of me, I don’t understand this. From the picture, I get the symbolism: red paint=blood, but the peace signs? What this image shows me is the inherent fallacy of the “peace” movement. These protestors, who advocate a “peace” in our time, are actually demanding inaction in the face of genocide, murder, and ethnic cleansing. Millions of people should be allowed to die, according to this logic, but if one US combat brigade moves to stop it (and heaven forbid if it lines up with US national interest) then the only recourse can be “No Blood For Oil.”

This picture shows me that the modern peace movement has blood on their hands. They have blood on their hands from the deaths of thousands of South Vietnamese that we didn’t help after our withdrawal. They have blood on their hands from the genocide in Cambodia that occurred when the “Domino Theory” came to fruition and Pol Pot got to enact his crazed thesis of societal equalization and wealth distribution (communism carried to its ultimate end state, where children killed their parents with machetes at the behest of the government). They have blood on their hands through the inaction in Rwanda, where millions of people died, and because we lost 18 good men in Somalia, we couldn’t get involved. The peace at any price movement will continue to have blood on their hands if they get their way and withdraw from Iraq, leaving the region to bloodshed and strife at the hands of heartless terrorists. They will have blood on their hands if Iran uses a nuclear weapon against innocent civilians, if Sudan continues its genocide in Darfur and we do nothing to stop it, and if we accept fake promises of “peace” from anyone that would seek to do violence onto others.

I guess this view, that people who want to take innocent life should be stopped, and that universal human rights should apply to everyone, used to be a classical liberal value. These people that “ain’t gonna study war no more” doom themselves, and their children, to repeat the mistakes that have been made in the past by those that think the basic nature of humans has changed.

Bolton vs. the Moonbat

By John

Exiting the UN Security Council today, US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton took a few minutes to field questions from the press. Among them was a barking moonbat, who wanted to get the latest conspiracy out to a national audience. Luckily I had my TiVo handy....

Reporter: You talk quite often about the credibility of the UN and it seems....

Bolton: and so has Secretary Rice recently

Reporter: Yes and Rice [note, not Secretary Rice...Rice.] has as well. Um, that seems to work in your favor when they do what they want you to do, but you violated the UN charter when you went to war against Iraq. And you consistently lie to us about the reasons that we went to war. And this war was drawn up in [garbled] Israel in 1996, with the Project for the New American Century. And, you know..how...why do you have credibility other than that you've just got the biggest guns?

Bolton: Can I ask what media outlet you're with?

Reporter: [garbled] Weekly

Bolton: I see. We did not violate the UN charter and the war to overthrow Saddam was not drawn up in Israel...

Reporter interrupts Bolton, but wasn't speaking into a microphone so I couldn't make out what she was saying. From what I could tell it, she started to get a bit hysterical, asserting something to the affect of "yes it was! yes it was!" Bolton smoothly dismissed her and moved onto the next question, presumably from a real reporter.

Are the moonbats now doing media ambushes? I thought this was pretty funny and Bolton was clearly amused, but moonbat-reporter was stone cold serious. I'm glad that her publication, which was obviously fringe and obscure, was unintelligble. I'd hate for her rag to get free press from a stunt like this....

Struggling with the Concept of a Volunteer Military

By Charlie

More here

Lt. Col. Carol Ann Redfield of the Army ROTC program at N.C. State was caught off guard. "This is the first time I know of that anything like this has happened here," she said. "I certainly appreciate that people have different opinions, and they should be able to express them, but I have a problem when they damage property."

My caption: I'll save you from terrorists! Plus, when the hurricanes come, I'll keep you safe!

PS: If you don't want to fight "our" wars, don't join up. There's no draft, guys...

Mama Moonbat Crosses the Line

By John

I remember a conversation I had some time ago with a staffer at a major policy think-tank in DC. The discussion came around to Cindy Sheehan, who was just making news at the time.

"Do you think she's going to turn votes come 2006?" I asked.

The staffer replied simply and quietly, "No. She is not very bright, she'll discredit herself eventually."

That conversation was the first thing that came to my mind this morning when I read this.

I will tell the world why Casey has no marker yet. In the first place, does anyone who is attacking me know how Casey was brought home from Iraq? We picked him up in the United loading dock in a cardboard box and he was off-loaded into a hearse without one honor guard. We had to wait for about a half hour on a curb near the United freight area for his one escort, who rode from Dover Air Force Base in a seat, while Casey was treated as an over-sized piece of luggage. Has anybody held her other sobbing children who are sitting on a curb in San Francisco, waiting for the remains of their big brother to be carried over to the dock by a forklift?

Her words are enough to make you choke.

Jim Hoft meticulously researched and deconstructed Sheehan's false claims this morning. He did an absolutely magnificent job, one of the best posts I've read from the widely-praised Gateway Pundit blog.

I can deal with Cindy slandering the military. The circles she runs with has a long, distinguished history of lying about America's armed forces, calling us baby-killers, murderers, and fascists. These are arguments that don't hold water and need to be propped up by lies for justification's sake.

Blaming the funeral home was a cheap shot, these were the guys who paid out of pocket to have Sergeant Sheehan properly buried.

But what upsets me the most is that Sheehan's 11 April statement was premeditated. She wasn't caught off guard by a curveball question, and she wasn't cornered in a debate. She sat down, knowing that she was lying, and deliberately slandered the people who took the most interest in properly laying Casey Sheehan to rest.

I understand that Cindy's public speaking campaign isn't so much a tour as it is her crawling from gaffe to gaffe, but this one borders on unforgivable. Charles Johnson at LGF accurately sums up this whole stinking mess:

If this doesn’t completely discredit Mama Moonbat, nothing will

.

Cry Havoc

By John

And let slip the dogs of anti-war...

As the tempo of Iranian chest-thumping and thuggish threats increases, so increases the volume of liberals who oppose military action against the theocracy.

It's not so much that the anti-war left is opposing a current military campaign, they are screaming mad over reports that the Pentagon may be planning for the eventuality of a military campaign.

I hear repeated statements from politicos like Howard Dean who insist that this particular political faction can be trusted with the national defense. Unfortunately for Howard, their stance on tangible issues relevant to the national defense, like Iran, certainly indicate otherwise. If there was ever an issue that screamed for decisiveness and resolve, it is America's security. But when faced with tangible plans for winning The Long War, the anti-war left consistently bats for the other guys.

President Bush says that it is necessary to wiretap calls from Al-Qaeda operatives to locations in the United States. The anti-war left calls for the President's impeachment.

Secretary Rumsfeld explains that interrogating enemy combatants is an irreplaceable, indispensable intelligence tool, and that locations like Guatanamo Bay faciliate our ability to gather information that saves American lives. The anti-war left calls it torture.

The White House says that plans to attack Iran are "speculation," but caveats that it is important to keep all options on the table when dealing with an unstable, heavily armed, near-nuclear theocracy.

The anti-war crowd says:

Digby: I suspect that these actions have been ongoing since Bush was reelected. Remember his constant refrain about "using his political capital?" His reelection seemed to infuse him with even more grandiosity than he showed before. For instance, his first order of domestic business wasn’t to disband the department of education, a longtime conservative goal. He set out to destroy social security — long known to be the third rail of politics. He thought he was destined (by God?) to fundamentally change the nation and the world. His arrogance knew no bounds.Within that framework, it is entirely believable to me that he could have ordered regime change in Iran more than a year ago. And it is almost certain that he could have authorized a new clandestine service in the DOD that is unanswerable to congress. The administration’s understanding of presidential power during "wartime" allows him to do anything he deems necessary to "protect" the country.

Code Pink: Help Us Avoid War with Iran!

Glenn Greenwald: Iran, which -- although saddled with a highly unpopular president who is clearly malignant and who uses nationalistic rhetoric to boost the morale of his base- is a country that is, in fact, ruled by a council of mullahs which has exhibited nothing but rationality and appears to be guided by nothing other than self-interest.

The Left Coaster: Where the hell are the Democrats on this issue? Why hasn’t any Democrat on either the Senate Armed Services Committee or the Senate Foreign Relations Committee publicly demanded to know under what authority the Bush Administration is doing advance work inside Iran? We now know that Bush redirected resources from Afghanistan towards Iraq war planning in the spring and summer of 2002, without congressional authorization, so it is entirely plausible that we have already been engaged in these activities for over a year now inside Iran, as new reports indicate.

The list goes on and on. Not one mention of the reprecussion of a nuclear Iran. Not one quote from Ahmadajined on the "destruction of Israel," or the "annihilation of the west." To the ever-suspicious Kos Kids & Co., it's all viewed from the Chimpy McBushitler lens, e.g. if the President supports it, it must be evil and creepy.

I will never understand the mentality that labels the Iranian Mullahs "rational" and President Bush "insane." What I do understand that such a mindset is completely incapable of maintaining the national defense. I'm not saying that supporting any and all proposed military actions is a prerequisite for a muscular defense policy. However, I am saying that if you want to be taken seriously in a strategic discourse, you better ditch the sophmoric whine-fest embraced by the Daily Kos gang and bring some real solutions to the table.

Sorry kids, but "Bush is bad, mmmkay" is not a solution.

**UPDATE** Shrink and Gates of Vienna also have posts up that intersect with Cry Havoc, highly recommend checking them out. Did GOV's Fjordman get his name from his long and deep posts?

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Multiplicity

By John

Cindy Sheehan multiplies. Her daughter just attended her first ever protest, reading a poem to a crowd of some 300 unwashed bongo players outside the president's Crawford ranch:

"Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave? They say that he died so the flag will continue to wave. But I believe he died because they had oil to save."

Give the anti-war crowd credit, they never hesitate to use the most ineffective means possible to convey their message. I'd list poetry and interpetive dance at the top of that list.

Hat Tip to the First Lady of the Milblogosphere.

Comedy Central Wimps Out

By John

Even though I was swamped last night trying to stand up OpFor, I still made time for part 2 of South Park's battle with dhimmitude.

The short skinny is that Comedy Central found a stool to stand on, grabbed a giant megaphone, and proclaimed in one voice to the American people "We are hypocrital cowards!" Cowards because of their decision to cave, hypocritical because the episode concluded with Jesus pulling a Triumph the Comic Insult Dog and pooping on everything.

In the words of SP character Kyle, I've learned something today. The double standard which mandates the trashing Christianity as a-okay, but condemns similiar treatment of minority religions as insensitive and wrong is a real one. What a disgusting display of weakness on their part.

Michelle has an excellent roundup, writing:

I was just happy to see someone, anyone, in the pop culture world confront some of the fundamental issues raised by the Cartoon Jihad for a mainstream American audience.

Yeah roger that. Certainly makes anti-PC movements like "South Park Conservatism" somewhat easier to deconstruct.

The Anchoress did a fine job explaining South Park's use of Christ as the end of the show:

The point was made to America by SP putting up a cartoon bound to offend various Americans - and any American who would rather not see “pooping” on the flag. Once again, they put the question out there - “what will you allow and what will you ban? And are you willing to fight for the First Amendment or just pay lip service to it until one of your sacred cows-or-icons are insulted?”

More from Captain Ed and the Media Blog.

Michelle also made sure you guys know where to give Comedy Central a chunk of your cranium, posting CC's feedback link. Course of you really wanted to be effective, they've let everyone know that death threats work too*.

Read More »

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