military
mikethemadbiologist | March 16, 2007
Hear the Mighty Roar of the Peter Pan Conservatives: those conservatives who think that policy failures are not due to strategic, tactical, or logistical flaws but solely due to to a lack of will. It appears that this way of thinking has completely permeated Little Lord Pontchartrain's brain. Neocon Irwin Stelzer had a luncheon meeting with the president. His description is chilling.
Stelzer describes four 'lessons' that were discussed. Here's the second lesson:
Second lesson: Will trumps wealth. The Romans, the tsars, and other rich world powers fell to poorer ones because they lacked…
mikethemadbiologist | March 12, 2007The latest snafu from the War Department: we're sending soldiers to Iraq who are unfit for combat. From Salon:
"This is not right," said Master Sgt. Ronald Jenkins, who has been ordered to Iraq even though he has a spine problem that doctors say would be damaged further by heavy Army protective gear. "This whole thing is about taking care of soldiers," he said angrily. "If you are fit to fight you are fit to fight. If you are not fit to fight, then you are not fit to fight."
As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq, a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort…
mikethemadbiologist | February 25, 2007What happens if you want to fight a war, and the generals threaten to not show up? From the Sunday Times:
SOME of America's most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.
Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.
"…
mikethemadbiologist | February 22, 2007...we might want to issue them rifles. From the NY Times:
"We're behind the power curve, and we can't piddle around," Maj. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, commander of the Oklahoma National Guard, said in an interview. He added that one-third of his soldiers lacked the M-4 rifles preferred by active-duty soldiers and that there were also shortfalls in night vision goggles and other equipment. If his unit is going to be sent to Iraq next year, he said, "We expect the Army to resource the Guard at the same level as active-duty units."
...Capt. Christopher Heathscott, a spokesman for the Arkansas…
mikethemadbiologist | February 3, 2007There's a very interesting poll about Iraq from The Financial Times. In short, 72% of U.S. troops want the U.S. to leave Iraq within twelve months:
Most American troops in Iraq believe the US should withdraw within the next year, according to the first poll of US military personnel there.
President George W.âBush, whose overall approval rating fell to a new low of 34 per cent this week, has repeatedly said the US would finish the mission in Iraq.
But a Zogby International/Le Moyne College poll found that only 23 per cent of US troops believed they should stay "as long as they are needed".…
mikethemadbiologist | January 14, 2007The frustration of the soldiers in Afghanistan must have just 'surged'. Why? Because, as part of the Bush-McCain surge, soldiers in Afghanistan will be withdrawn and sent to Iraq just in time for a Taliban offensive:
A US Army battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is due to be withdrawn within weeks to deploy to Iraq.
Army Brigadier General Anthony J. Tata and other US commanders say that will happen as the Taliban is expected to unleash a campaign to cut the vital road between Kabul and Kandahar.
The official said the Taliban intend to seize Kandahar, Afghanistan's…
mikethemadbiologist | January 9, 2007Mike responds to a post I wrote that questioned Speaker Pelosi's call to increase the military by 30,000 troops.
I agree that given the way the force and its responsibilities (more about those below) are currently structured, the troop rotation schedule is near the breaking point. However, I still disagree with Mike for two reasons. First, I simply don't trust the current administration not to send the troops to Iraq. Nothing the Bush administration has done in the past six years has convinced me that they will do anything other than that, Congress be damned. The only way Bush will not…
mikethemadbiologist | January 8, 2007Did you vote for that? I didn't. It's great that Pelosi said on national television that Bush won't be receiving a blank check. But it's another part of the interview that bothers me. From Crooks and Liars (italics mine):
PELOSI: I'm saying two things. We will always support the troops who are there. If the president wants to expand the mission, that's a conversation he has to have with the Congress of the United States .
But that's not a carte blanche, a blank check to him to do whatever he wishes there.
And I want to make a distinction here. Democrats do support increasing the size of…
mikethemadbiologist | January 3, 2007You might have read about (or are personally experiencing) the massive snowstorms hitting the Plains states. So what does that have to do with Iraq? From the NY Times:
Colorado and Kansas were trying to find enough helicopters capable of hauling hay bales weighing up to 1,300 pounds, said Don Ament, Colorado's agriculture director. Many helicopters in the state's National Guard fleet are in the Middle East.
That is supposed to be the primary role of the Guard: natural disaster, backup for enforcing civil order, and threats against the country itself (I refuse to use that Orwellian-sounding…
mikethemadbiologist | December 20, 2006You might have heard about the U.S. contractor who volunteered to be an FBI informant. For his service, he received 90+ days of Gitmoization. As hideous as that is, there are some other disturbing points in the NY Times story.
First, was he imprisoned because he had hard evidence about this:
Mr. Vance went to Iraq in 2004, first to work for a Washington-based company. He later joined a small Baghdad-based security company where, he said, "things started looking weird to me." He said that the company, which was protecting American reconstruction organizations, had hired guards from a…
mikethemadbiologist | December 5, 2006
For those of you just joining tonight's program, the Nazis are the bad guys
Just when you think the Peter Pan Right can't possibly get any daffier, they just manage to do so. By way of Crooked Timber comes this synopsis of a Michael Novak article in the Standard:
Josh Marshall links to a Michael Novak piece in the Standard - a piece that is surely the apotheosis of Green Lantern foreign policy (well, until next week); complete with vulnerability to the hideous yellow streak that is the MSM.
It begins ... horribly:
Today, the purpose of war is sharply political, not military; psychological…
mikethemadbiologist | November 30, 2006Not predictable. Predicted. Over at DailyKos is a powerful diary by the wife of a Vietnam & Iraq I war veteran. During a discussion with a bunch of conservative college students, the following happened (italics mine):
A little blonde got up enough nerve to say something. My husband wouldn't tell me exactly what she said, but I can picture it. My nieces, Thing 1 and Thing 2, are fairly typical college students. They back Bush 110% because he's the president and a Christian and God chose him to be president instead of that arrogant Al Gore or that CATHOLIC LIBERAL John Kerry ( cps…
mikethemadbiologist | November 27, 2006It's nice to see that even in the midst of two overseas conflicts, the U.S. military can find time to obsess about homosexuality. The military has downgraded homosexuality from a "disorder" to a "circumstance." This means homosexuality is considered equivalent to stammering or stuttering, dyslexia, sleepwalking, motion sickness, obesity, and insect venom allergies. Our government is still run by crazy people.
mikethemadbiologist | November 1, 2006Why couldn't Kerry have said this in 2004? Despite what the Washington Mandarins think, anger is the appropriate emotion. Sigh.