H&I Fires* 4 May

Open post for those with something to share, updated through the day. New, complete posts come in below this one. Note: If trackbacking, please acknowledge this post in your post. That's only polite. You're advertising here, we should get an ad at your place...

I sent Cassie this pic because, well, to be honest folks, her captioners are better than us, in general... and it just begged good captions. Lex will be *so* proud (lazy bum, just doing a repost).

Gout sucks. Especially when you do *everything* the doc told you to, and it *still* flares up. Heh. It would appear the Gout=blogging, however. -The Armorer

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1SG Keith will reach 10,000 today. Will it be you? One of his readers is the proud Mother of a Soldier in Afghanistan. Her daughter's unit has adopted a girl's school in need of school supplies. Drop 1SG Keith an email for details on where to send 'em.

**UPDATE**
Lucky Number 10,000 goes to a referral from Andi's World! Someone from Austin, TX followed the link from Andi's site to 1SG Keith's Milblog Conference AAR, and became lucky #10,000. WHOO HOO!

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On a day of sickness and death 'round these parts, a story of both that inspires more than it saddens... - FbL

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Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - A proliferation of phony heroes is prompting such groups as The Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation to lobby for tougher laws to punish the impostors.

The organization reports that there are 113 living recipients of the nation's highest military award, but an FBI agent who tracks the fakes said impostors outnumber the true heroes.

"There are more and more of these impostors, and they are literally stealing the valor and acts of valor of the real guys," said Agent Tom Cottone, who also works on an FBI violent crime squad in West Paterson, N.J.

Full story here. -The Armorer

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What would Conrad do? - FbL

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Reading from the various DoD sites, I noted at Operation Iraqi Freedom the weekly "This Week in Iraq" geared towards the deployed and their families. Sometimes, it's a bit dry and reads like a bad hometown paper, but every once in awhile I see interesting things. There has been talk and talk about whether Iraq is in a civil war or not. Much of it has been a matter of semantics, some of it has been trying to compare the situation to other known civil wars. The military has insisted Iraq is not in a civil war, but, in this PDF weekly they indicate that they are not unaware of the possibility and provide indicators they are watching. They also put to bed the question that continued to arise the last two weeks about alleged mass movements of "internally displaced people". I pulled the graphic from the PDF and you can find it here with some additional analysis of the numbers. In short, the military says, "no civil war" and "no internal refugee problem", but "we are watching". Look for yourself. [Ahem! Sign yer work!]-Kat

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Referencing an excerpt from John's post below,

"Here's hoping a Kerry-clone President will have the will to resist this:

French authorities said Thursday they may eventually press the United States to have Moussaoui serve his life sentence in France under two conventions on the transfer of convicts. They were waiting to hear the conditions of his sentencing."

I suggest the official US answer be: "Nuts!"

Of course, if the respondent is a Kerry-clone, I doubt he would get it...Instapilot

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*A term of art from the artillery. Harassment and Interdiction Fires.

Back in the day, when you could just kill people and break things without a note from a lawyer, they were pre-planned, but to the enemy, random, fires at known gathering points, road junctions, Main Supply Routes, assembly areas, etc - to keep the bad guy nervous that the world around him might start exploding at any minute.

Not really relevant to today's operating environment, right? But, it *is*

The UAVs we fly over Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for targets of opportunity are a form of H&I fires, if you really want to parse it finely. We just have better sensors and fire control now.

I call the post that because it's random things posted by me and people I've given posting privileges to that particular topic. It's also an open trackback, so if (Don Surber uses it this way a lot) someone has a post they're proud of, but it really isn't either Castle kind of stuff, or topical to a particular post, I've basically given blanket permission to use that post for that purpose. Another term of art that might be appropriate is "Free Fire Zone".