Friday - October 10, 2008

Another Half Solution

NATO Troops to target Afghan Drug Operations

NATO defense ministers Friday authorized their troops in Afghanistan to attack drug barons blamed for pumping up to $100 million a year into the coffers of resurgent Taliban fighters.

“With regard to counter-narcotics ... ISAF can act in concert with the Afghans against facilities and facilitators supporting the insurgency,” said NATO spokesman James Appathurai, referring to the NATO force.

The United States had been pushing for NATO’s 50,000 troops to take on a counter-narcotics role to hit back at the Taliban, whose increasing attacks have cast doubt on the prospects of a Western military victory in Afghanistan.

However, Germany, Spain and others were wary and their doubts led to NATO imposing conditions on the anti-drug mandate for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

Troops will only be able to act against drug facilities if authorized by their own governments; only drug producers deemed to be supporting the insurgency will be targeted; and the operation must be designed to be temporary — lasting only until the Afghan security forces are deemed able to take on the task.

Afghanistan supplies 90 percent of the world’s heroin, a trade worth billions of dollars.

Until now, responsibility for dealing with the problem has lain with the Afghan police, but NATO commanders believe the fledgling force cannot cope with the problem. They say the time has come for NATO to move against the drug barons.
...
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Thursday stressed the need for action.
“Our guys are killed by the weapons bought by the Taliban, financed by drugs money,” de Hoop Scheffer said.

The War On Terror is inextricably linked to the War On Drugs. Not just in Afghanistan, but all across Central and South America, in Africa and Southern Asia too. The connections are blatant and are very easy to find with just the slightest bit of looking. And while drugs may be against pisslam, selling them to us infidels is A-Ok. If they can split hairs that fine, then so can we. All drug producers and carriers are therefore terrorists. Kill them.

Burn down every field you find. Every. Single. One. Arrest the farmers. Or just shoot them. And raze the villages if they give you any lip. Salt the ground; take the oldest of Old School approaches. That’s what primitives understand after all. Possession of opium plants or paste or even poppy seeds is an instant hanging offense. Jumping through velvet lined golden hoops to prove that some particular drug producer is involved with the Taliban is a waste of time. They are ALL involved, or at most one step away.

Let them grow wheat instead. Or potatoes. Or even saffron. You find one special farmer, and make him the only authorized grower, because the world needs some opium for medicine. 100 acres worth is probably enough. Put up a big fence and a few machine gun towers and add some really unclean vicious guard dogs. Better yet, just grow it at home. The damn flowers grow anywhere, even in the UK. Why buy it from foreigners in the first place?

Eliminating the Taliban’s source of income is the same as sinking Japanese shipping during WWII. Destroy their support infrastructure and they can’t fight nearly as well. This is a war. Start fighting it fully.

   Monday - October 06, 2008

War in Afghanistan cannot be won, British commander Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith warns .

It’s June 5th and Ike finally says, We can’t win this war.
Of course the Germans hear that too and so ......

August 6, 2008
Sie haben Papiere? Sprechen Sie Deutsche?

War in Afghanistan cannot be won, British commander Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith warns
The war in Afghanistan cannot be won, Britain’s most senior military commander in the country has warned.

By Caroline Gammell
Last Updated: 11:53PM BST 05 Oct 2008

(just what these grunts wanna hear, right?  risking and often losing life and limb, they gotta wonder just what the hell they are doing this for if a high ranking officer says they can’t win.  and now we might not. because the enemy knows all they gotta do is wait us out.  good strategy brigadier. )

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith said the British public should not expect “a decisive military victory” and that he believed groups of insurgents would still be at large after troops pulled out.

In June, he claimed that British forces had reached a “tipping point” against a weakened Taliban after their leadership was “decapitated”.

But on Sunday the army officer said it was time to lower expectations and focus on reducing the conflict to a level which could be managed by the Afghan army.

Brig Carleton-Smith, commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade - which has just completed its second tour of Afghanistan - said talking to the Taliban could be an important part of that process.

He insisted his forces had “taken the sting out” of the Taliban for 2008 as winter and the colder weather approaches, but warned that many of the fighters would return in May or June.

He said British forces had killed six important Taliban commanders and delivered a vast turbine to Kajaki dam to significantly bolster electricity supplies.

However, he told a Sunday newspaper: “We’re not going to win this war. It’s about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that’s not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army.

“We may well leave with there still being a low but steady ebb of rural insurgency… I don’t think we should expect that when we go, there won’t be roaming bands of armed men in this part of the world.

“That would be unrealistic.”

Brig Carleton-Smith, who took the unusual step last month of calling for 4,000 more troops, said the goal should be to find a non-violent resolution.

“We want to change the nature of the debate from one where disputes are settled through the barrel of a gun to one where it is done through negotiations,” he said.

“If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that’s precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this.”

“That shouldn’t make people uncomfortable.”

A Ministry of Defence spokesman defended the brigadier’s comments and said the aim was to provide a secure infrastructure for the Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army.

“We have always said there is no military solution in Afghanistan. Insurgencies are ultimately solved at the political level, not by military means alone,” the spokesman said.

“We are not looking for a total military victory, it is much wider than that, improving the infrastructure to alllow the country to move forward without the need for a total defeat of the Taliban.

“We fully support President Karzai’s efforts to bring disaffected Afghans into society’s mainstream with his proviso that they renounce violence and accept Afghanistan’s constitution.”

Joining the debate about how long troops will stay in Afghanistan, Brig Carleton-Smith said he expected tactical military responsibility to be handed over to the Afghan government within five years.

Defence Secretary Des Browne has already warned it will take years to establish a stable democracy and told a think-tank in Washington in July that it would be a “longer haul” than Iraq.

Last week, the British ambassador to Kabul, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, was linked to disparaging remarks about the role of international troops in Afghanistan.

A French newspaper printed what it claimed was a leaked memo which quoted Sir Sherard as saying that foreign forces were “slowing down and complicating and eventual end to the crisis”.

http://tinyurl.com/4s9yb4

   Thursday - September 18, 2008

Excalibur Works Just Fine, Thanks

I guess all the development costs were worth it. 6 months ago I posted about the relatively new Excalibur guided artillery shell. Here is some feedback from the field. Wow!

Excalibur Deemed ‘Amazingly Accurate’

September 15, 2008
Army News Service|by Audra Calloway

From taking out top al-Qaida operatives to safely firing within 50 meters of dismounted infantrymen, the Picatinny Excalibur projectile is already paying dividends a year after its initial fielding to Soldiers.

When Excalibur first debuted in Iraq in May 2007, it became the Army’s first all-weather, precision-guided artillery round. While the Excalibur Program Office at Picatinny estimates approximately 70 of the ground-breaking Excalibur rounds have been fired in Iraq, Capt. Victor Scharstein of Alpha Battery, 2nd Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, commanded one of the original units to field the round. Scharstein used Excalibur multiple times in the Diyala province of Iraq. Operation Arrowhead Ripper, the deliberate clearance of Baquba, was one mission he recalls using the precision round.

“It was an urban setting, it was extremely bad weather and there were no aircraft able to fly that day,” he said.

Because of Excalibur, his unit was able to fire an artillery round at a target within 50 meters of infantryman on the ground, who were clearing the area.

“Had we not had Excalibur, we wouldn’t have been able to do that,” he said. “We wouldn’t have been able to engage that target.”

While the unit could have engaged the target with conventional artillery, that would have risked significant collateral damage and put civilians and U.S. Soldiers at risk, Scharstein said. Overall, Scharstein said the round was “amazingly accurate” with his fires producing a 92 percent success rate, meaning that the fired round hit or had an effect on the intended target 92 percent of the time.

The rest of the Army also began seeing the powerful effects of Excalibur almost immediately after its debut. In July 2007 it was used to take down a top target for al-Qaida south of Baghdad, Iraq, according to a July 16, 2007 news release by Multi-National Division-Central Public Affairs. This al-Qaida in Iraq cell leader was responsible for improvised explosive devices, vehicle-borne IEDs and indirect fire attacks on coalition forces in Arab Jabour. The operative was in a meeting house when the 1st Battalion, 9th Field Artillery Regiment fired two Excalibur rounds and destroyed the house, the release said.

Such precision can be attributed to Excalibur’s global-positioning system technology. When the projectile leaves the gun, it does a self-test, acquires its signal and uses the signal to find its target, Scharstein said. This precision accuracy has “brought artillery back into the close urban fight,” Scharstein said. “Excalibur gives you the confidence that you can support Soldiers in the close fight.”

Excalibur, which debuted in Afghanistan in February 2008, currently has an accuracy of less than 10 meters at ranges out to 14 miles, said Lt. Col. Joseph Minus, Excalibur program manager at Picatinny Arsenal. However, the next phase of Excalibur, called Ib, will have an accuracy requirement of less than 10 meters out to 24 miles, he said.
...
Excalibur also has a multi-functional fuze, which allows the round to be programmed to explode in the air, once it hits a hard surface or after it penetrates inside a target.

Conventional weapons have this same capability, but a fuze needs to be changed depending on which option is required, said Scharstein. With Excalibur’s multi-functional fuze, instead of changing fuzes, you program the setting you want.

   Thursday - August 14, 2008

The West must support Georgia and spell out costs of Vladimir Putin’s actions.

THE FOLLOWING IS THE EDITORIAL FROM TODAY’S TELEGRAPH.

YOU MIGHT WANT TO FOLLOW THE COMMENTS AS WELL. GET SOME IDEA OF PPL’S THINKING HERE.

The most telling support for the beleaguered Georgian government has come from Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. They, after all, have first-hand experience of living under the Russian boot.

Elsewhere, America has taken the lead in denouncing the annexation by Moscow of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. George W. Bush, who visited Tbilisi in 2005, said he was dispatching his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to the Georgian capital, and yesterday saw the landing of the first American military aircraft, carrying humanitarian aid.

Washington, along with Britain and France, had already cancelled joint military exercises with the Russians.

Meanwhile, the EU has, unconvincingly, taken on the role of mediator. At a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels yesterday, it expressed willingness to monitor the terms of the truce agreed by Nicolas Sarkozy, its current president.

However, Poland and the three Baltic states rightly condemned Mr Sarkozy’s intervention as failing to respect the territorial integrity of Georgia.

The West must now spell out the cost to Vladimir Putin of his revanchism in former “Soviet space”. The talks between the EU and Moscow on a new “strategic partnership” and meetings of the Nato-Russia Council should be put on hold. Russia should be expelled from the G8 and denied entry to the World Trade Organisation.

The first three steps would be a blow to the pride of a country that craves to be considered a great power again. The fourth could also have a long-term effect on a state that is still overwhelmingly dependent on oil and gas. Consider the boost that WTO membership has given to the more diversified Chinese economy.

To treat with impunity what has happened in Georgia will merely encourage Mr Putin to apply the screw elsewhere in the former Soviet empire. The most obvious target is Ukraine, which, like Georgia, aspires to join Nato.

The bone of contention could be the Russian Black Sea fleet’s base in Sevastopol, whose current lease expires in 2017.

Further north, Moscow might be tempted to intervene in Estonia and Latvia in the support of the Russian-speaking minority, and will certainly put further pressure on Lithuania to establish a visa-free corridor between the mainland and the maritime exclave of Kaliningrad.

To forestall further revanchism, the Russians should be left in no doubt that the consequence will be the freezing of their considerable assets in the West.

Diplomatic isolation and financial sequestration are the best means of curbing the sinister attempt to recreate their old sphere of influence.

http://tinyurl.com/5fzd9q

   Tuesday - July 29, 2008

Forrestal Disaster Anniversary

July 29, 1967

Today marks the anniversary of the Forrestal disaster, the largest single loss of life the US Navy suffered during the Vietnam War as far as I know.

An electrical short occurred in one of the aircraft on the flight deck of the USS Forrestal, causing a small missile to fire off. The missile shot across the deck and struck another aircraft waiting to take off, igniting it’s fuel tanks. The aircraft that was hit was piloted by a Lt. Cmdr. John McCain, who managed to escape the damaged plane by leaping from the nose of the craft into the spreading fire. He tried to rescue another trapped pilot from the flames until an explosion tore up his leg and blew him yards away.

The fire spread across the flight deck, “cooking off” two elderly 1000lb bombs on another airplane. Those explosions caused other explosions and within a couple minutes an enormous fire had engulfed the aft half of the ship. The explosions ripped the deck open and burning fuel turned the below decks spaces into a charnel house. The deck fires were extinguished in a bit over an hour, but the below decks fires continued to burn for half a day. In the end 134 sailors were dead, many more injured, 23 airplanes had been destroyed and another 43 damaged. $73 million damaged had been done to the ship. Firefighting efforts pumped so much water at the flames that the ship was on the verge of rolling over. Only emergency efforts to pump fuel from one side of the hold to the other prevented the list from becoming a rollover, which would have drowned most of the crew of more than 5000.

A Naval Board of Inquiry found several root causes: the bombs that had gone off were leftovers from WWII made from less fire stable explosives, some safety procedures had not been properly followed, and not enough of the crew had been trained in fire fighting. Today’s carrier crews are given much better training, often at the Navy’s Farrier fire training center in Virginia, named in honor of the Forrestal’s fire chief who died fighting the flames. The USS Forrestal was decommissioned in 1995 after serving 38 years.

There is a very well done 5 part documentary/recreation put up by VibraciaX. This is part 2:





There are quite a number of videos on this disaster at YouTube. Please don’t bother to read the comments; since John McCain was on the ship when this happened, and though he may have behaved as heroically as the rest of crew, the left has taken over the comments and said the usual horrible things. Scumbags.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/29/2008 at 11:30 AM   
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   Thursday - July 10, 2008

New Military Concept: Cooperation?

New Joint Unmanned Aerial System Plans

Sorry, no moonbattery here. Just a bit of good news that you probably won’t see on your TV news shows. It looks like the Army and the Air Force have found a way to cooperate with each other when it comes to those wonderful Predator UAVs. This is important, as that program is rapidly expanding, and the new aircraft, the MQ-9 Reaper, is starting to replace the 12 year old Predator. Plus, I have a somewhat vested interest in this story, as my cousin’s husband, a senior avionics specialist with the 174th New York Air National Guard, is over in Iraq right now. Again. I think this is his 4th trip for this war, and he was over there in ‘91 for the first one too. His unit has has flown F-16s for ages, but now they are scheduled to become a UAV operational group.

WASHINGTON - Army and Air Force leaders met Monday to discuss developing a new joint unmanned aerial system concept of operations.

“As opposed to finding independent solutions, we are trying to find joint, collaborative solutions that best support the joint warfighter in any spectrum of war,” said Air Force Gen. John D.W. Corley, head of Air Combat Command.

Corley met with Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command, and Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, director of the Army Capabilities and Integration Center. The meeting at Langley Air Force Base, Va., emphasized developing unmanned aerial system operations for the full spectrum of conflict—from centralized major combat operations to smaller-scale decentralized operations to include stability operations.

“Taking a joint approach on UAS issues will allow us to rapidly develop force capabilities from concept and capability development through employment by identifying, linking and synchronizing all of our activities, so we can give the best capability to joint warfighters who are fighting a very elusive, thinking and adaptive adversary.”
The approach will include doctrine, organizations, training, leader development, materiel, personnel and facilities, officials said.

One focus of the CONOPS will be methods to best share information and command and control.
“If we can’t share data, then we can’t share information,” Corley said. “If we can’t share information, we can’t command and control.”

Finding joint solutions begins with new CONOPS that look at every piece of the UAS spectrum, rather than individual pieces of the puzzle, the ACC commander said.

“We have to treat this as a system,” he said. “You have to think about all the pieces.”

The general said such interoperability will increase effectiveness from a combat standpoint.

“We want to identify areas or opportunities for increasing interoperability in order to optimize support to the joint warfighter,” said Wallace. “It’s all about working together to get a capability to our troops quickly and effectively.”

All of this is Mil-Speak for “We have to work together on this, because some day the budgets are going to get cut. Plus, we’ve figured out that if our people and their people can talk directly to each other, we can react faster against threats.” And that makes a whole lot of sense to me and to everyone over there and their relatives back here. Let’s hope this cooperative endeavor doesn’t get bogged down in meetings and paperwork. Yes, it might cost a few million to change a couple radio frequencies and swap some software, but in the long run everyone will benefit.

The UAV program (what the military just has to call the UAS program) has had a good bit of friction. The things fly, so the Air Force felt they should be theirs, with pilots at the controls. The Army found out that the latest crop of soldiers, who grew up on video games, can pilot these things just as well. So who needs the Air Force? Even being in-theater isn’t completely necessary; because of satellite links these planes can be flown from Omaha nearly as well as they can be flown from Baghdad. But somebody has to maintain and rearm the birds over there, so that part needs figuring out too.

The MQ-9 Reaper is a much bigger version of the MQ-1 Predator. It’s as big as an airplane, and surpasses the combat capabilities of the Predator in every way, because it was designed from the ground up to be a fighting platform.  The Predator was designed as a Recon vehicle, and only later adapted to a combat role. So the Reaper can fly twice as fast, twice as high, and carry 7 times as many missiles.

At five tons gross weight, the Reaper is four times heavier than the Predator. Its size — 36 feet long, with a 66-foot wingspan — is comparable to the profile of the Air Force’s workhorse A-10 attack plane. It can fly twice as fast and twice as high as the Predator. Most significantly, it carries many more weapons.

While the Predator is armed with two Hellfire missiles, the Reaper can carry 14 of the air-to-ground weapons — or four Hellfires and two 500-pound bombs.

“It’s not a recon squadron,” Col. Joe Guasella, operations chief for the Central Command’s air component, said of the Reapers. “It’s an attack squadron, with a lot more kinetic ability.”

Don’t you just love Mil-Speak? “Kinetic ability”. That means “blowing stuff up”.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/10/2008 at 10:21 AM   
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   Thursday - June 26, 2008

You’re on your own now UK

US sends home the last American Nukes from UK

The United States has quietly withdrawn its last nuclear weapons from Britain after more than half a century, a watchdog said on Thursday.
...
he Federation of American Scientists, which studies the U.S. nuclear arsenal, said in a report that Washington had removed its last atomic bombs from the British Royal Air Force base at Lakenheath, where they had been stationed since 1954.
...
At the height of the Cold War, the United States had more than 7,000 nuclear weapons in Europe. Most were withdrawn in the early 1990s, and today, Kristensen estimates the number at fewer than 240.

But the CND’s Hudson said their final removal would not effect the campaign against deploying U.S. missile defense systems in Britain—which still has its own nuclear arms.

(nuke “expert") Kristensen said it was “a puzzle” that the withdrawal had not been announced at a time when the West is arguing with Russia over weapons cuts.

“By keeping the withdrawals secret, NATO and the United States have missed huge opportunities to engage Russia directly and positively about reductions to their non-strategic nuclear weapons, and to improve their own nuclear image in the world in general,” he wrote.

Britain still has it’s own supply of bombs though. I guess that should be enough. 

Posted by Drew458     on 06/26/2008 at 12:50 PM   
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   Monday - June 09, 2008

100 British dead in Afghanistan: A moment for sombre reflection

Because I think it’s important enough.  The numbers may be small by comparison, but the consequences and the angst of the families are the same as ours.
And maybe more so because so many really don’t understand why they are there. 

By Con Coughlin
Last Updated: 1:27AM BST 09/06/2008

The confirmation that the British death toll in Afghanistan has officially reached the 100 mark should be a moment for sombre reflection on a mission that has far exceeded expectations in terms of the demands it has made on our Armed Forces.

It is just two years since the government first committed British troops to southern Afghanistan as part of Nato’s mission to assist the Afghan government with the reconstruction of the country after thirty years of almost incessant civil war.

At the time Downing Street’s spin-doctors went into over-drive in their attempts to persuade a sceptical British public that, if all went according to plan, not a shot would be fired in anger as the mission was all about reconstruction and the eradication of the country’s poppy crop – which accounts for 90 per cent of the heroin sold on Britain’s streets – rather than joining battle with the Taliban.

Thankfully senior British officers on the ground such as Brigadier Ed Butler, who commanded 3 Para battlegroup during Britain’s initial deployment in the summer of 2006, realised that nothing would be achieved in the country’s lawless and inhospitable Helmand province unless British forces physically evicted the Taliban from the towns and villages it had been allowed to re-occupy in the south of the country.

Brig Butler, 48, whose untimely resignation from the British Army was announced at the weekend, went on to cause the government further embarrassment by unhelpfully pointing out that the invasion of Iraq had prevented British forces from securing Afghanistan much sooner because vital resources were diverted to overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime before the Taliban had been properly dealt with.

Consequently, far from failing to fire a shot in anger, for the past two years British front line troops have been involved in the fiercest combat operations experienced since the Falklands war, and suffered significant casualties in the process.

While British forces have succeeded in destroying the Taliban’s fighting capability, they have also paid a heavy price in terms of dead and injured.

The lengthening death toll will no doubt lead to calls for Britain to end its contribution to a war many argue can never be won. But to do so would not only have catastrophic consequences for Afghanistan, it would seriously compromise our national security.

The reason our troops are fighting in Afghanistan is to prevent Islamic extremists rebuilding the terrorist infrastructure that enabled them to carry out the September 11 terror attacks against the United States.

Many of the subsequent terror plots against the West – including attacks against Britain, such as the London bombings of July 2005 – originated from the lawless tribal areas on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This is no time for the government to lose heart. Instead it must ensure that it provides our dedicated and courageous service men and women with the support and equipment they need to ensure the sacrifices of the past two years are not in vain.

http://tinyurl.com/46jy6w

Posted by peiper     on 06/09/2008 at 03:10 PM   
Filed Under: • Military • UK • War On Terror •  
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   Sunday - June 08, 2008

Meanwhile in Fwance

French Army reduced to 4 old ladies and a few loaves of stale bread?

This Fwench Army Jeep has a broken transmission. It can only go in reverse.
It took 5 years for somebody to notice that this was a problem.

French army falling apart, documents show
Most of France’s tanks, helicopters and jet fighters are unusable and its defence apparatus is on the verge of “falling apart”, it has emerged.  According to confidential defence documents leaked to the French press, less than half of France’s Leclerc tanks – 142 out of 346 – are operational and even these regularly break down.  Less than half of its Puma helicopters, 37 per cent of its Lynx choppers and 33 per cent of its Super Frelon models – built 40 years ago – are in a fit state to fly, according to documents seen by Le Parisien newspaper.  Two thirds of France’s Mirage F1 reconnaissance jets are unusable at present.

According to army officials, the precarious state of France’s defence equipment almost led to catastrophe in April, when French special forces rescued the passengers and crew of a luxury yacht held by pirates off the Somali coast.  Although ultimately a success, the rescue operation nearly foundered at an early stage, when two of the frigates carrying troops suffered engine failure, and a launch laden with special forces’ equipment sunk under its weight.  Later, an Atlantic 2 jet tracking the pirates above Somali territory suffered engine failure and had to make an emergency landing in Yemen.

“External operations, in the Ivory Coast and Lebanon are a fig leaf: we are able to keep up the pretence but in ten years our defence apparatus will fall apart,” one high-ranking official said.  The disclosure comes just ten days before President Nicolas Sarkozy announces a major reform of the armed forces, with a defence white paper outlining France’s military priorities for the next 15 years.  He is expected to argue that the situation can only improve by reducing the number of France’s operational troops from 50,000 to 30,000, and its fighter aircraft, as well as closing military bases.

Don’t forget that Little Nicky over there is the Conservative one. And his solution is to cut the army in half, instead of fixing all their broken crap. The Progressive side of the aisle probably wanted to have an international garage sale, and dump the whole damn thing, soldiers included.

As a proud member of the EU, Fwance has likely decided that it’s own national defense is somebody else’s job. Probably the Belgians. Or their best friends the Germans. Yeah, that sounds like a really good idea.

CONTINUE READING ...

In honor of fwance, here is le smut. And more le smut!. Very fwench. Such nuance, oui?

CLOSE IT UP ...

Posted by Drew458     on 06/08/2008 at 05:19 PM   
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   Saturday - May 31, 2008

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid

And be angry too. This woman, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is 2nd in line to succeed to the Presidency if some catastrophe should befall Bush and Cheney.

The woman is stark raving mad AND a drooling moron AT THE SAME TIME. I didn’t think that was possible. The only amazing thing is that she didn’t choose Memorial Day to give this talk. I guess she was confused about the holiday, just like Obama.

Go over to Ace and read it. Pull up the podcast and jump to the 62 minute mark. And prepare to heave.

More can be read here.

Of course, Nancy isn’t actually totally wrong. She’s just a total douchebag who is only 95% wrong. But her remarks show that we are in an active state of war with Iran. Active. State of War. So whatcha gonna do Booosh? Whatcha gonna do?*







* I’d suggest nuking San Francisco as a start. Hey, it couldn’t hurt. Just make sure the Navy is out of town first.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/31/2008 at 09:22 PM   
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   Monday - May 26, 2008

Memorial Day 2008

Memorial Day 2008

Send up a prayer for those who have fallen, for without their sacrifice you would not be living the life you have today. God bless them, and may their be as few more in the future as possible.

My posting will continue to be light today and for the next few days. I’m out working, sweatin in the sunshine. Which means it’s time to make hay. Or money! Thanks to Christopher and Peiper for lots of new and interesting posts.



Update!!
Rancino’s comment links to the Google woulda-shoulda-coulda-but-didnt website. So screw ‘em. From the submissions, I think this one is the best. Ten hut!! Sa lute!

On a more personal note, right now all I can smell is deck stain. I’m down 2 shirts, a ballcap, an old pair of jeans and a worn pair of shoes. Plus 2 paint rollers and a 4” brush maybe. But the decks are done, both of them. 32 hours labor. $25/hour. People, if you’re building a deck use that Trex stuff. It costs more up front, but it pays for itself because you don’t have to hire me every 4 years. And first class deck stain is $32 a gallon too. 10 1/2 gallons I went through in 4 days. Damn, I am exhausted. Two delicious Dogfish Head 90 minute IPAs (yummy yummy beer!!) and I’m ready to hit the hay. But I’ve got to get cleaned up, run 3 loads of laundry, cook dinner, run another load of dishes, and I really ought to vacuum a little. Tomorrow I’m back down there again, installing lattice. Then they want their windows done. And maybe some yard work. And the dog - my new buddy! - needs to go to the vet and they have no time. Gosh, I love working for yuppie lawyer couples like this. They have no time, but lots of money. And they’re eager to give it to my by the bagfull. Lovin it!


Updated update
I wanted to post some nice graphics for Memorial Day, but all I had were the following. But somehow, borrowing somebody else’s work just didn’t seem right, so I used what I had taken myself. This is from a trip we took last year, to a memorial so big it’s an entire national park. History buffs will recognize it instantly -

Because it hasn’t changed much in the past 145 years, though they’ve patched the bullet holes -


This is the gateway to the cemetary that Cemetary Ridge is named after. About 200 yards behind the building, a year after history passed through here one week in July, a very tall man once gave a short speech (sorry I didn’t take a better shot, but this plaque was not the center subject of the photo)



A few hundred yards off to the left, and down the hill a little, an enormous group of armed men once walked a mile uphill, in parade order and subject to intense cannon and rifle fire, under command of a man named Pickett, to fight for what they believed in. Very very few of them made it to the top, as thousands of their formerly fellow citizens, who believed in something entirely different, fought them to a standstill. In the course of an hour or so, thousands were killed or wounded, and the tide of an entire war was turned forever. One more memory kept alive by a holiday like today.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/26/2008 at 09:10 AM   
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   Thursday - May 22, 2008

Better Role Models

Rancino sent me this the other day, but I had trouble with the video. Now that it’s been ‘Tubed, I can paste it up. Nice work Mike The Marine. His video turns the decent (and starting to be overplayed) Nickelback tune on it’s head.

‘RAQSTAR

Posted by Drew458     on 05/22/2008 at 10:05 PM   
Filed Under: • Military •  
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   Wednesday - May 21, 2008

A Blogvertisement

Putting the DAM back in JDAM





brought to you by Military Motivator Blogspot, a nice place to find lots of military motivator posters.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/21/2008 at 09:05 AM   
Filed Under: • Military •  
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   Saturday - May 17, 2008

I think they should name it the “G Whiz” system

Where do fighter pilots traveling faster than the speed of sound go when they really need to “go”?  Until recently, the answer has been: into a bag.

But it’s not a great solution. “Piddle packs”—heavy-duty bags containing absorbent sponges—have been blamed for at least two crashes over the years, and they’re not always tidy.

A few years ago, after enduring years of complaints from pilots, the Air Force let it be known that it was looking for an answer.

A small medical equipment development company in Milton, Vermont answered the call.

“The DoD put out a list of projects they needed solutions for,” said Mark Harvie, president of Omni Medical Solutions. “Bladder relief for pilots was one of the items on the list and we were looking for a new project,” he said.
...
That project turned into the Advanced Mission Extender Device, known in military jargon as the AMXD.

After four years of testing by the Vermont Air National Guard and the Air Force and about $5 million in government and private funds, AMXD is spelling relief for pilots aloft.
...
The Air Force recently bought its first 300 systems for U.S. pilots around the world at $2,000 each.

Cost of Air Force Education and flight training: $1,000,000
Cost of Advanced Fighter Aircraft: $45,000,000
Gotta Pee R&D: $5,000,000
Taking a whiz at 1200 mph: Priceless

My name is better. Otherwise these pilots are going to take an awful lot of ribbing. “Hey Maverick, you got your Extender Device strapped on?”

Posted by Drew458     on 05/17/2008 at 09:55 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor • Military • Science-Technology •  
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