H&I* Fires 2 Aug 2006

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...

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NetBrad has a suggestion for the Castle Arsenal:

Think about it, mount it on a vehicle and and put a camera in the nose...

Whatcha think - should we get this?

Next, 1SG Keith's interest in Public Affairs comes into focus (know what I mean, nudge-nudge wink-wink)...

Rachelle Leah with the Ultimate Fighting Championship fires an M9 Beretta pistol at the "Shotgun" range on Contingency Operating Base Speicher. Photos by Spc. Michael Pfaff, 133rd MPAD

Heh. For some reason *this* caption did just fine...

Today in history... Hannibal spanks the Romans at Cannae:

Surrounded and attacked on all sides with no means of escape, the Roman army was subsequently cut to pieces. An estimated 60,000–70,000 Romans were killed or captured at Cannae (including the consul Lucius Aemilius Paullus and eighty Roman senators). In terms of the number of lives lost within a single day, Cannae is among the costliest battles in all of recorded human history.

Read the rest here, at Wikipedia.

And just *when* will we hear from Carborundum on his tagging, eh?

I'm off to work. Have a day, f-f-f-folks! -the Armorer

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Confederate Yankee - Muckraker ;^) and possibly mover of the news... Confederate Yankee in the attack...

...and speaking of that Walleye up above - this would have made a great Throne of Argghhh! Aluminum Overcast, baby! I actually saw one in flight, as a wee tyke. One of my first memories. -the Armorer

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I've always liked llamas. Now I see they soldier, too. If we ever have the space, we'll add a llama or two to the herd. That and a goat. SWWBO likes those critters.

Israeli special forces and their llamas wait to cross the Israel-Lebanon border west of Avivim, late night August 1, 2006.REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach (ISRAEL)

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The Haditha news doesn't get better. Let the chips fall where they may. -the Armorer

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On Iraq - 16 years ago today, some of the seeds of our present discontent, sown many times over the millenia, were watered.

The pain of the war climbs a little higher. Corporal Phillip E. Baucus, USMC, died in Iraq last week. What makes his death more notable than others? His uncle. Senator Max Baucus, of Montana. -the Armorer

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Rich Lowry takes up the discussion that occured in this space in the War of the Tribes post.

It is for Qanas that Hezbollah conducts its operations among civilians in the first place. It hopes that Israeli attacks will cause civilian casualties so that the Jewish state’s offensive will be delegitimized. It thus depends on a perverse logic whereby a civilized military force attempting to avoid civilian casualties at the cost of the effectiveness of its own operations is considered barbaric and is pressured to end its campaign — and the world perversely reasons right along with it.

This is one of the greatest asymmetries of asymmetric warfare. For a guerrilla force, worse is always better, even though the worse comes at its instigation. It seeks a widening gyre of death and destruction. “Promoting disorder is a legitimate objective for the insurgent,” David Galula writes in his classic study of insurgency warfare. “Moreover, disorder — the normal state of nature — is cheap to create and very costly to prevent.”

Read the rest here. -the Armorer

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Murtha Sued: it's about time [h/t Old War Dogs]. - FbL

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Snerk! How much trouble would a right-winger get into for using "Blackface" this way? -the Armorer

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This should provide plenty of fodder for discussion 'round here... *looking around innocently* [h/t Cassandra - FbL

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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 http://www.thedonovan.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&blog_id=1exploding 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".