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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Some philosophical questions for today:
a) Is it alright for the DoD to hire anthropologists? There’s some pretty strong opinions on the matter.
b) Predicting the outcome of the Iraq theater of operations, and therefore the exercise of JWT. Mark Danziger the Armed Liberal in this corner and in other corner Matthew Yglesias.
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There’s things afoot other than giving a beating to wackado defilers of the faith of Islam, like the struggle for control of the gov’t of India and the fate of the nuclear deal we made with them. Next we move to some analysis of what Russia has going on(note: Denizen ry thinks this author is full of Shiite and is waaay superficial, but that’s me.).
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Because the bringing beat downs to wackado defilers of the Islmaic faith is something near and dear to our hearts, mostly because of the people we know doing it, here’s a story about the complication that War on Drugs creates for War on Terrorism. What to do with the poppy crops is an old topic here at The Castle.
--ry
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Via the good offices of the "Thunder Chickens" (Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263) the Osprey arrives in the combat zone. Well, 90% of 'em made it in first try. Hey, that matches Army standards on wheel vehicle availablity.
Students on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard aren't allowed to leave their village without a shotgun and ammunition.
Hey - speaking of kids and guns - some advice for pediatricians who are annotating gun presence and storage practices in child medical records... Just click here for some advice. And parents - there's a form in there for you to ask your Doctor to sign *and* put in the records, too! H/t, Jim C. -the Amorer
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Snerk! Nothing like keeping an open mind while on a "fact-finding" trip...
No matter what he learns on his "fact-finding mission" to Afghanistan, Liberal defense critic Denis Coderre said Monday that he and his party remained convinced that Canada must end its combat mission here when the current mandate expires.
Yeah, that *is* nothing like keeping an open mind. Heh. How 'bout the Strategic Corporal?
A corporal who was ordering a pizza shook Coderre's hand. Moments later he told a journalist he knew that Coderre wanted to end the combat mission, which is strongly supported by the troops.Asked what he thought of Coderre's position, the corporal paused before finally saying, "Well, he's entitled to his opinion."
Indeed, Corporal, indeed. H/t, CAPT H. -the Armorer
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No offense intended to Chief Bill, Dusty, and many others who laid it on the line in Kosovo, but one wonders if going there did anything useful when instances like this, indicative of tensions bubbling just below the surface about to burst out into homicidal rages again, keep happening. Yet, we send them, continue to send them, and continue finding places to send them to(like Darfur).
But it's okay. The body count is small enough and out of the media eye enough that we can pat ourselves on the back about it and call it a 'good war' (Unlike Vietnam, Iraq,....) regardless of what the reality on the ground is.
--ry
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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 (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 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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