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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Two Afghan children were recently killed when a Canadian soldier opened fire on their vehicle after the driver failed to heed warnings not to approach any closer. As expected, our MSM were all over the story.
I wrote about escalation of force issues back in November of last year, and things certainly haven't gotten any easier for convoy sentries since then. In response to some of the second-guessing being done by media and civilians alike, here's what one LAV gunner who's been there and done that had to say:
In fall 06 I was a LAV gunner involved in a convoy op in southern Afghanistan. At one point a vehicle pulled out and began speeding towards us, and I fired my COAX in accordance with ROEs. When the dust cleared the battle aiming mark on my daysight was sitting right in the middle of some kid's head as I looked through the windshield at him sitting on the driver's lap. The driver decided to stop just in time, and I checked fire just in time. No one was hurt, but I was seriously pissed off. How the frig could the driver have been so stupid? Risking his life and his family's life like that? Doesn't he know that this game is for keeps? If the timing had been a half second off I would have wasted every single ******* person in that car. And I would have had to live with that.
He lays out another situation where he held off, and wasn't so lucky. - Damian
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The CF is about to wind down Op Argus, which deploys the Strategic Advisory Team - Afghanistan, a unique team that operates outside of both the U.S. operation and ISAF in Afghanistan; it's a bilateral agreement between Karzai's government and the Canadian Forces. Canadian officers mentor Afghan government ministries in creating plans and in the execution of those plans. Basically, they've taught staff officer skills to Afghan bureaucrats who desperately needed to build that capacity.
And now the CF is shutting it down because the Department of Foreign Affairs and CIDA (foreign aid) have gotten their knickers tightly knotted that the CF is stepping into their turf. Bureaucratic infighting from thousands of miles away. - Damian
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I can't help it. John Kass is cracking me up: This is your brain on hopium.
-Kat
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Seriously, I couldn't pass this up. The Saudis are going to enforce an old law prohibiting the walking or selling of animals as pets in public. Why might you ask?
The reason behind reinforcing the edict now was a rising fashion among some men using pets in public "to make passes on women and disturb families," he said, without giving more details.
A ploy that crosses all cultural boundaries it seems. - h/t Hotair Kat
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Being glad you're there, but knowing you don't have all the answers. Just another day at the USO. - 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 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. Of course, now I have to call them UAS's, because someone got a Legion of Merit for the name change.Anyway, I call the post H&I Fires because it's random things posted by me and people I've given posting privileges to that particular topic. Another term of art that might be appropriate is Free Fire Zone.
Im going to post about this to http://www.militaryconnection.com/
Multiple times, even. It was a darn good schedule for interrupting operations. Problem is, it was developed in a vacuum, and didn't take into account friendly movments, so she suppressed blues moving into their positions.