H&I Fires* 12 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...

When you get H&I Fires up, would you please throw in the following code?:

Fran O'Brien's Round-up: Beautiful story on Fran's was broadcast on CNN last night (click for video). An editorial cartoon is also making the rounds. Finally, stay tuned to Andi's World for the report on her attendance at the dinner for the wounded last night (temporarily hosted at a different DC-area hotel).

Why yes, yes I can. - The Armorer

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Part II of Zarqawi's Battle of Baghdad. -Kat

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Oooooo! Ooooo! Looky what JMH sent me! A nicely tart hoser-spanking from John Robson:

Plenty of mercy, but no muscle for Darfur After the Holocaust, enlightened people around the world said “Never again.” They lied. I think they’re lying again on Darfur. And hallucinating.

It’s apparently been agreed that we’re going to blast our way into Sudan and slap the natives silly until they adopt peace, order and good government plus, I suppose, gay marriage. After all, Hollywood stars including George Clooney are demanding action. Maybe they should make a movie about a brave president who doesn’t mind invading Muslim countries that oppress their own people and foment terror. Oops. Wrong George.

Then it gets... wait for it... better!

The Globe and Mail editorialized that “The international community now faces a question. Is it going to back down and let the suffering in Darfur continue because a terrorist villain and the leader of a rogue regime tell it to, or is it going to do the right thing and act? The question answers itself …” Yeah. But not the way you think.

The “international community” has ignored, or actively abetted, a number of genocides since 1945. Remember Cambodia? And Democratic Senator George McGovern, a key player in forcing the U.S. to abandon Indochina in 1975, reacting to the Khmer Rouge slaughter three years later with: “Why don’t we send the Marines to do something about it?” This combination of fatuous arrogance and tragic incompetence would have humbled a lesser man. Stop the Vietnam war because Communists aren’t tyrants. Start it again because they are. Or not. All in an afternoon’s work for a liberal idealist. Or a narcissist.

Sorry - you have to go here to read it all....

Thanks, John! -The Armorer

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Porter Goss. The Other Shoe Drops?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Law enforcement officials executed search warrants Friday on the house and office of the CIA's outgoing executive director, an FBI spokeswoman in San Diego said. (Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

More here. Aside from throw any guilty bassids in jail, term limits are starting to look good again. Reduces some of the incentive.

Changing subjects...

Oops. Of course, they wouldn't lie about anything, would they? (I can't wait for some people's heads to explode over that sentence...)

-The Armorer
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Heh. Who's next? Bruce Willis? A touch over the top, Mel. -The Armorer

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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".