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H&I* Fires, 28 APR 2007

April 28, 2007 | | Comments (9)

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.

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I have to laugh. One day we’re berating the US Army for accepting gangbangers and racists, and the next we’re castigating the Army for trying to find and expunge them. Kind of like how people ranted and raved about how slow gov’t was in response to Katrina but now there’s editorials an inch thick on the ground railing against moves to alter Posse Commitatus that would allow for faster response at the federal level.
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Catching bad guys and pumping them for information to be used in the WOT isn’t enough to please some people.
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I’m not a fan of Dugout Doug, but this strikes me as proper:

Amid complaints from military chaplains and concerns that disclosure of the brothels would embarrass the Occupation forces back in the United States, on March 25, 1946, MacArthur placed all brothels, comfort stations and other places of prostitution off-limits. The RAA soon collapsed.

--ry
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I don't know if anyone has listened to this previously, but I found this very moving: I Am A Ranger...I Do Not Fail. (tissue alert) H/T Thunder Run

Don't forget, Welcome Home for the 24th Marines today

On the wall, Iraq the Model - The Wall and David Kilcullen writes Urban Tourniquet.

Kilcullen and the Fadhil brothers both note that the "protest" was organized by Al Qaeda or other Sunni insurgents and used the press as a weapon. Kilcullen also notes in comments that, while Malike publically halted the wall, a few days later, after discussions with his own military, police and the US forces, after the press went on to something else, Maliki gave the go ahead for the wall to go into place. This is really the Tal Afar campaign on a much larger scale, broken up by small neighborhoods. I imagine, since McMaster's is one of Petraeus's group of "intelligensia" for his current strategy, that the idea came from that success.

Another note from a soldier on the ground: The Great Wall of Indifference

For those of you who are (or are not) Hitchens Fans, he talks about the history of the Barbary Pirates and the US involvement. H/T Thunder Run

And then another from Hot Air, Hitchens on free speech in which he takes them to task for trying to enact a speech code to protect Islam when it is the least free and demanding protection when some of its adherents do things like protest cartoons with signs that say "behead the blasphemers". The discussion on Islam is in the last 6 minutes, but I really recommend the entire lecture.
-kat

*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 (oops, can't call 'em UAVs anymore - they're now Unmanned Aerial Systems... some Colonel got his Legion of Merit for that change...), er, um UAS's 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. 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".

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9 Comments

By Marine6 on April 28, 2007 8:32 AM
And, of course, because El Supremo ordered it, there was no more prostitution in Japan from that day forward. Pity he apparently forgot about his powers of omnipitance later or he could have ordered the North Koreans not to be aggressive, and the Chinese not to intervene. Marine6 Sends
 
By ry on April 28, 2007 10:00 AM
Hey, he let you guys play at Inchon. What's your beef, Sandman?;)
 
By Gwedd on April 28, 2007 10:36 AM
Comrades, I hope that whoever ordered that search for tats gets their @ss handed to them in a sh*tcan. There's a special place in hell reserved for pointy-eared gits like that, and there should be NO PLACE in the US Military for them. Yet, they seem to gravitate to the military like flies to a cadaver. Maybe their actions are a response to a lack of p*nis size, or maybe they didn't get enough respect in school. I put them in the same class of people who WANTED to be hall monitors, the type who enjoy pulling the legs off of insects and setting animals on fire. But that's just me. It's actions like this, however, that bring Kipling's poem "Tommy" to mind. Respects,
 
By John of Argghhh! on April 28, 2007 12:24 PM
So, AW1 Tim, how many gang signs reside in *your* tat-field? 8^ )
 
By Gwedd on April 28, 2007 4:23 PM
John, Heh... none that I know of, although there was that time on liberty in Sandy Eggo..... some "lost time" that I'm not sure i want to recall..... No, I just can't stand the holier-than-thou attitude. The issue of gang tats reminds me very much of the sort of comments made as to why "coloreds" shouldn't be allowed to serve. Respects,
 
By Jon The Mechanic on April 28, 2007 5:57 PM
A couple of points. 1. With the media, we can do no right, unless we are hanging our own people out to dry, and then they whine because we are not doing it fast enough for them to use against us. 2. Once again, our open enemy in our backyard is castigating us for catching bad guys trying to do bad things. Anyone else thinking about Lincoln's shutting down of the press during the civil war may be the right thing to do with those who publish classified information?
 
By Skippy-san on April 28, 2007 9:19 PM
Yea, Mc Arthur really put a damper on prostitution in Japan, just like the current TIP policy has really hurt the customers of the juicy bars in Korea.
 
By Justthisguy on April 29, 2007 12:25 AM
On the tattoo thing: Back when my Dad was dying, but I thought we could bring him home, if we got the HVAC fixed, the guy who came out to inspect the system turned out to be a very competent, easygoing fella, tolerant of my weirdness, and mine and Dad's horribly bad housekeeping, with a strange device tattooed on his left arm. It had a skull and crossbones, and what looked like the SS runes, and other nasty qualities. I asked him what it was about. He said it was a USMC Scout-Sniper tattoo. I said, Kewel! or words to that effect. He said he'd tried being a policeman for a while after getting out of the Corps, but couldn't go along with the cop attitude and preferred to make an honest living. That's what I remember. I think I wrote about it to Sgt. B at the time
 
By ry on April 30, 2007 7:37 AM
JTM got my meaning apparently. The situation is a total goat-f@#$. We should be hopping mad that gang bangers and racists are getting into the military. Looking for them, unless it's white racists dontchaknow, is offensive because we're targeting a minority group---fascistic tendency if the press ever saw one. And AW1 Tim, it isn't simply tats. WGaF about tats? It's a specific set of one's that people get(stuff like the Swastika or one identifying one as a memeber of Loc Tre) that's a problem. It isn't simply tats. This is something that should be considered, but done long before this point in time in someone's service. A new phenomenon is that gangs are sending their junior members into the military. When junior member gets out he comes with a set of skills he teaches to others(like how to shoot without resorting to the stuuuped spray and pray, but telegenic, stance; and how to set up an ambush(if it's another gang I don't care, but ambushing cops, well, that just sucks.).
 
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