When I think of wars I’ve known, they seem to boil down to a three-legged stool: capability, will and time. The U.S. always has plenty of capability; will and time – not so much. Dollars can buy capability, but not the other two. Part of the dearth in will and time is due to the repeated perversity of Congress in shirking its …
Pentagon Potshots II
You may recall early last week when we mentioned the pair of shootings at the Pentagon and the Marine museum at Quantico, Va., about 30 miles south. At the time, Pentagon officials thought the shootings “random” events but were studying “the possibility of a connection.” Today they connected them, after ballistics tests showed that …
Snafus avoided
Foreign Policy magazine has rounded up what it calls the top 10 “cockamamie military schemes” ever concocted by civilian thinkers supposedly on our side. “Many proposals — while informal or semiserious — are preposterous and overlook even a basic understanding of political objectives, military strategy, geography, and logistics,” the …
Actions v. Words, International Edition
There’s been a simmering dispute between the U.S. and China over repeated U.S. declarations that the aircraft carrier USS George Washington would sail into the Yellow Sea – also known as the West Sea due to its location west of the Korean peninsula — to caution North Korea to behave. After months of Washington bluster, they’re …
WikiLeaks Releases Iraq War Logs
The long-awaited wave of classified U.S. military documents from WikiLeaks crashed ashore Friday afternoon, detailing battlefield tales of Iraqi brutality, higher-than-acknowledged Iraqi civilian deaths, and Iranian perfidy — but no jaw-dropping revelations.
— The documents detail repeated killings and torture by America’s Iraqi …
"Doc! I've Been Hit!"
The Navy — whose medical corpsmen have been treating wounded sailors and Marines since the days of the Revolution — are under a lot of stress in Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s why the Navy has just published The Docs, a graphic novel designed to give those yet to deploy to a war zone a preview of what they’ll face. “Their dual roles as …
Bang! You're Dead.
I recall watching some of the earliest firings of the Army’s Multiple-Launch Rocket System on a test range at Oklahoma’s Fort Sill nearly 30 years ago. The tracked vehicles “ripple fired” multiple rounds 20 miles downrange. It made a lot of noise and came pretty close to its targets, which generally were intended to be tanks and other …
Saudi Saves U.S. Helo Industry Singlehandedly
The Pentagon has just sent Congress Saudi Arabia’s latest shopping list, topped with 84 F-15 jet fighters and 190 helicopters, as predicted here last month. It’s always funny how some quantities are round — 200,000 20mm cartridges, 300 AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles, 1,000 2,000-pound GBU-31B V3 Joint Direct Attack Munitions — and some are …
Not Particularly Revelatory
National Public Radio has canned long-time commentator Juan Williams for remarks he made to Bill O’Reilly on Fox News Monday. O’Reilly, a provocateur of the right who only matters if you let him, has been blaming Muslims en masse for the 9/11 attacks. He asked Williams about what O’Reilly called a “Muslim dilemma,” and that “the cold …
Been There, Done That. Integrating Gay Troops Into The Army
It’s always enlightening to dive into the military’s historical archives, because armies have been doing the same things for hundreds of years. While the troops in charge today might think they’re blazing a new trail, chances are good soldiers a generation or two earlier traveled the same path, now overgrown with the passage of …
Pentagon potshots
What does it mean when two military installations are shot at two days apart? Most likely, not much. The FBI is exploring possible links. But folks are riled, and as we have seen recently, folks who are riled like strutting around with their side arms and, who knows, maybe even taking shots at the National Museum of the Marine Corps and …
Latest On Gays In The Military…and Where It Could Lead
As expected, the Obama Administration has gone to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to appeal a lower court’s ruling that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is unconstitutional and ordering the government to stop its enforcement. Federal District Court Judge Virginia Phillips made her ruling final Tuesday.
The Administration says:
The
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The Widow Judge Who Ended "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
After President Obama, 535 members of Congress, and 1.4 million people in the military wrestled unsuccessfully with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” for what seems like eons, who is this judge who single-handedly has wounded, perhaps mortally, the 17-year old policy that bars openly gay men and women from serving in uniform?
Virginia …