NEWSFLASH: Guns use bullets

Well, this article is about a good as that title. Charley Reese isn’t a Leftist Moonbat, he is a Buchananite Moonbat. No friend of President Bush or the war – that is for sure. He doesn’t have the happiest outlook on life either, look at his Basic Premises. He also seems to have a problem with, well, you know.

Enough of that, lets talk about his “you are old enough not to have an excuse” (he was born in ’37) article he put out in The Sanford Herald titled That’s a lot of Ammunition. Sigh.

It seems Charley made no effort to talk to any professional trigger pullers on what it takes to train, maintain and use a military. He states he spent 2 years in the Army, I guess he forgot. He reads like someone who still thinks the most of the military live in open barrack garrisons.

Let’s play.

A story in The Independent, an excellent British newspaper, estimates that the U.S. armed forces have fired 250,000 bullets per dead insurgent in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Granted, that's an estimate that would be hard to prove, though it is based in part on a General Accounting Office study that states that the U.S. armed forces have expended 6 billion bullets between 2002 and 2005. They sure haven't come close to killing even 100,000 insurgents.

He might as well said, “I have no concept what I am writing about, but I am going to do it anyway.”

In the movies, we are used to seeing soldiers pick off their foes like Daniel Boone, but in real wars - at least in the modern ones - soldiers often don't see the people they are shooting at.

He hasn’t been going to the box office lately. All you see is “spray and pray,” though if you want a realistic view of suppression fire (some Army guy help me here, I am out of my SME area – but that won’t stop me either) see Blackhawk Down.

When you are shooting 400 to 600 rounds a minute, they can add up fast, and the new Gatling guns shoot thousands of rounds per minute. Another point to keep in mind is that the 6 billion figure includes ammunition expended in training. Still, it seems like a heck of a lot of bullets.

Shoot 400-600 rounds a minute and you need to spend a few weeks loading magazines before every patrol, and have a mule behind you to carry them. Get your story straight Charley, are we shooting them all at terrorists or training with them? Who is your editor? I guess your next article will be “After WWII, out Navy has expended millions of sonobuoys and thousands of torpedoes without sinking a single submarine!!”

U.S. bought 313 million rounds from Israel Military Industries and paid about $10 million more than it would have cost to buy them in the U.S. I suppose that is just another favor for Israel,

Of course, we do everything for the Joooooozzzzzzzzz.

I guess in these inflationary times we should not be surprised that even the cost of killing people has gone up.

Inflationary times? What time warp did you come out of? This isn’t the 70s and 80s. You need a Econ and History refresher course, Charley.

Of course, the American War Between the States proved you can kill a heck of a lot of people with black-powder weapons. Around 600,000 Americans died in that war, more than in World War II. Naturally, the high number is due to the fact that Americans were killing Americans, a tragedy that never should have happened.

What is your point here? Americans are real good killers, or Lincoln should have allowed the CSA to be its own country?

I keep hoping that wars will become so expensive, nobody will be able to afford to fight them anymore.

Cue John Lennon’s Imagine. Yawn.

We talk over here on both sides of the issue, while over there young men die or lose vital parts of their bodies. … I think that if I were a soldier fighting in a war, I would have more sympathy for those who wanted to end the war …

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any non-vital parts of my body. Charlie, if you were fighting, you would want victory. Talk to a WWII Dane, Dutch, Norwegian or French vet and ask them if they are glad their nations had to stop fighting so early and if they wish America never entered the war. After all, if the USA kept out of Europe in WWII, the war sure would have ended earlier.

I don't know what 6 billion steel-clad bullets and brass cases weigh, but we have surely dumped tons of those metals on the landscapes of Iraq and Afghanistan. Oh well, better empty brass than live mines.

Did this line come from International A.N.S.W.E.R.’s random paragraph generator?

This reads like a blog entry. I can’t believe this guy was once nom’d for a Pulitzer. Maybe it is time to retire. This reads like a clueless blog entry at that. I should know, I write them all the time, ask Chap.

When do I get published in The Sanford Herald? Maybe if I find a way to malign the war effort and throw in some anti-Zionism I will get attention.