CDR Salamander

So, the Air France stewardess...errr...flight attendant wanted to meet you for breakfast you first day in Paris...and you forgot to Spring Forward!?!


You can get the background and watch full screen here.

Stand tall, get out the tissues and prepare to feel old.

The Royal Navy's Sea Harrier jump-jets, which played a vital role in the Falklands conflict 24 years ago, made their final flight yesterday.

Tributes were paid to the fighter as the last five from 801 Squadron performed an aerial display at Royal Naval Air Station Yeovilton, Somerset, their base for 26 years.

Wow. What a plane. What a record.

A former computer analyst at the National Security Agency was sentenced to six years in prison for taking home classified documents and storing them in boxes in his kitchen after he left the agency. ... prosecutors never said Mr. Ford was engaged in espionage ...

Mmmm. And what happended to Sandy "stuffy socks" Berger?

Under a plea agreement, he would pay a $10,000 fine, surrender his access to classified government materials for three years and cooperate with investigators.

And he gets to write stuff to get published, and host Democrat fundraisers too!

Maybe if he was Clinton's CIA Director, or NSC Staffer - he would be OK.

Silly fella, worked for the wrong administration.

Over at Phi Betta Cons,

According to a poll of 1,902 undergraduates published by the Yale Herald this Tuesday, Yalies still don’t understand why it’s so terrible to have the Taliban on campus.

Only 21% of students said they were embarrassed to have Hashemi here. Even more embarrassing, only slightly less (19%) said that they were proud to have him here. Over half of the students were “neutral” — seeming to indicate that the natural tendency here is not to think until somewhat has already told you what the answer is.

Oh, it gets worse when you read the whole thing.

The final coup de grace of ‘thought’ here is therefore to accept that everyone’s idea of morality is different, and to declare that every morality is equally valid. This has the effect of deleting morality entirely. So Yale is left with no way to tell good from evil, and I am left with Hashemi in my dining hall.

Stand for nothing, you will stand for everything. Q.E.D.

Your tax dollars at work (no not Lex's last perdiem check). From actual digital data from the spacecraft orbiting Mars. Want to know what it is like to fly through Valles Marineris? There is one 10g maneuver ... but boy what a ride.

Allah is guest blogging over a Michelle's place. He is a'spank'n Comrad Sheehan, poking the eye in an Azlan goober, and passing on the good news from Jawa. Go visit!

You have a horrible last few years, again, again, again, again, and again - giving yourself and the Navy a black eye. No one has ever denied there wasn't a problem, and the last few months the Navy is starting to address the issue well.

You would think you would want to wait for a couple of years of good news and progress before throwing awards at them. No. For the time period of such a bad record, you give them a Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation. That'll show 'em you hear 'em!

There are some great professionals at Navy Hospital Jax. Award them. Let the hospital get its reputation back first. Sigh.

Hat tip BA.

Working with the the Multinational Forces are so much fun. Click below to get a taste of NATO.

Need a little perspective? You need to review all 10 here.

Want to know what this is all about? Want to understand why many of us get so mad at the press and the modern-day copperheads? Think things will be easier without Bush? You need to read all of this.

To hear Mr. Abbasi tell it the entire recent history of the U.S. could be narrated with the help of the image of “the last helicopter.” It was that image in Saigon that concluded the Vietnam War under Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter had five helicopters fleeing from the Iranian desert, leaving behind the charred corpses of eight American soldiers. Under Ronald Reagan the helicopters carried the corpses of 241 Marines murdered in their sleep in a Hezbollah suicide attack. Under the first President Bush, the helicopter flew from Safwan, in southern Iraq, with Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf aboard, leaving behind Saddam Hussein’s generals, who could not believe why they had been allowed live to fight their domestic foes, and America, another day. Bill Clinton’s helicopter was a Black Hawk, downed in Mogadishu and delivering 16 American soldiers into the hands of a murderous crowd.

According to this theory, President George W. Bush is an “aberration,” a leader out of sync with his nation’s character and no more than a brief nightmare for those who oppose the creation of an “American Middle East.” Messrs. Abbasi and Ahmadinejad have concluded that there will be no helicopter as long as George W. Bush is in the White House. But they believe that whoever succeeds him, Democrat or Republican, will revive the helicopter image to extricate the U.S. from a complex situation that few Americans appear to understand.

Regardless of what more will happen over the next 2 years and 10 months, the next President will be tested much harder; as we all will be. Remember, as unpleasant as it is to think about, this war is generational. History will not let you pretend she doesn't exist. She is a jealous, needy bitch.

Ummm......you may want to get some different friends.

Several members of President Bill Clinton’s national security team are hosting a Washington fund-raiser tonight for retired Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak Jr., the Democrat running against U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon in November.

Officials at Sestak’s campaign headquarters in Media will not comment on the event, though an invitation sent out to potential donors and obtained by the Daily Times lists Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger as a host.

Yep. That Sandy. Mr "Stuffy Socks." Ungh.

Hat tip LargeBill.

Labels: Clinton, Sestak

You need to subscribe to Defense Daily, but I'll save you the trouble.

The Navy is expected in the coming weeks to rename its DD(X) combat ship to DDG-1000.

Now, go look at the Navy list of DD and DDG here. Besides my favorite class, the Kidds (DDG-993-996) our present DDG class, the Burkes, run from DDG-51-105. Now, being that everything nowdays has some type of guided missiles, IMAO, the "G" is redundant...but I will give the Navy a pass on that...I am sure that it wasn't that they didn't want to double up on the past recent DD numbering of the Spruance class (DD-963-997), I don't think we will have 800 and change DDX. In any case, in addition to the Burkes, all the older DDG (Converted Forrest Sherman DDG-31-34, Charles S. Adams DDG-2-24, Farragut/Coontz DDG-37-46), numbers doubled up older DDs from the early years.

What is wrong with the first DD(X) being DDG-106? What? I tell you what - too cleaver by half, cheesy, beltway amateur marketing gimmicks - that's what. For the same reason the F-18 became the F/A-18 (at least the USAF was honest enough to move back to the F-22 from FA-22), and we skipped F-24 through F-34 just because the X-35 "became" the F-35. Just as stupid as SSN-21.

It may seem clever for the Potomac Flotilla, but Shipmates let me tell you something you will agree with me over a beer at Pete's Bar; it is stupid and smarmy from the Fleet perspective.

Professionally insulting. Harumph.

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UPDATE: Correction. DDG-112 will be the last I relied on an official Navy site for my previous data - and it was out of date....so how about DDG-113...same point.

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With all the non-American flags sprouting all over, this just seemed to fit my mood....kind of...not really...but kind of. Those who have driven in the EU know what it means. I wonder what Michelle thinks?

Hat tip This Non-American Life.

I like B16 more and more.

THE Vatican has begun moves to rehabilitate the Crusaders by sponsoring a conference at the weekend that portrays the Crusades as wars fought with the “noble aim” of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity.

The Crusades are seen by many Muslims as acts of violence that have underpinned Western aggression towards the Arab world ever since. Followers of Osama bin Laden claim to be taking part in a latter-day “jihad against the Jews and Crusaders”.

The late Pope John Paul II sought to achieve Muslim- Christian reconciliation by asking “pardon” for the Crusades during the 2000 Millennium celebrations. But John Paul’s apologies for the past “errors of the Church” — including the Inquisition and anti-Semitism — irritated some Vatican conservatives. According to Vatican insiders, the dissenters included Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

Pope Benedict reached out to Muslims and Jews after his election and called for dialogue. However, the Pope, who is due to visit Turkey in November, has in the past suggested that Turkey’s Muslim culture is at variance with Europe’s Christian roots.

At the conference, held at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, Roberto De Mattei, an Italian historian, recalled that the Crusades were “a response to the Muslim invasion of Christian lands and the Muslim devastation of the Holy Places”.

Hat tip LGF.

Do they really belong together? Click here and let me know what you think.

I need to get a coffee.

You just can't make this stuff up. This is a serious site. Bask in it (peas be upon you).

Oh, and if it is good enough for a Cyclid, why not The King?

Hat tip LGF.

OK, this is a two-fer.

(1) - Who can identify that "I want one" patch on the Iraqi soldier's arm (no cheating for those who know how). (noooooo they aren't influenced by the hated American military, are they?).

(2) - And for you old Cold Warriors; what vee-a-ma-hickle are they tooling around with?

You can get a high res here, and the description is below.

(Mar. 10, 2006) Halasba, Iraq: Iraqi soldiers stand perimeter security after an improvised explosive device (IED) attack on a convoy of U.S. Army forces and Iraqi forces on their way to deliver medical supplies to the community of Halasba, Iraq. No one was injured during the attack.

U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 1st Class Michael Larson. (RELEASED)

Ah, the joys of being a German.

The Third Reich collapsed 61 years ago but you wouldn't know it if you walk into the Martin Luther Memorial Church in Berlin. The stark entrance hall is lit by a black chandelier in the shape of an iron cross. The pulpit has a wooden carving of a muscular Jesus leading a helmeted Wehrmacht soldier and surrounded by an Aryan family. The baptismal font is guarded by a wooden statue of a stormtrooper from Adolf Hitler's paramilitary Sturmabteilung (SA) unit clutching his cap.

I guess they could turn it into a Mosque. They need growing room.

You need to be a subscriber to The Economist, but here is the full text warning about what PC madness is doing to our best and brightest institutions - and this is beyond the Yale Taliban madness.

America's universities need to fix themselves while they are still on top
THE evidence from the world's campuses and common rooms could not be much clearer. America rules the academic roost. It boasts 17 of the world's top 20 universities, employs 70% of the world's Nobel prize winners and attracts the best and the brightest from just about everywhere.

Are American universities in this position because they are so good, or because their competition is so bad? The evidence, overwhelmingly, is that the latter is the case—especially when you look at Europe. Who for instance could fail to lure talent away from French universities where all the teachers are civil servants? But no American dean should bet on this lasting for ever. Oxford and Cambridge are getting their acts together, Switzerland is attracting some academic stars and China is ploughing money into higher education.

From this perspective, America's universities bear some uncomfortable resemblances to Detroit's big three carmakers in the 1950s: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler also presumed they would always rule the roost. Shorn of international competition, America's universities are run for the convenience of producers rather than their customers. The cost of tuition at public universities is soaring. Students have successfully sued the University of California for raising their fees.

Now the Corporation of Harvard has inadvertently challenged this smugness. Ever since the university's ruling body surrendered to pressure from the faculty and ousted Larry Summers from the presidency of Harvard at the end of last month, American newspapers have buzzed with questions about academia. Are the universities as good as they think they are? Are they upholding the standards of free speech and intellectual vigour? Are they training enough scientists and engineers? Are they encouraging social mobility?

Mr Summers enraged people in all sorts of ways: questioning the rigour of some of the newer “ologies”, getting ensnared in an economist friend's conflict-of-interest case, wondering rather too pointedly why so few women reached the top of the sciences. Both combative and thin-skinned, Mr Summers is not an easy man to defend on every count. But his ouster points to two great weaknesses in American academia.

Political correctness has changed from a subject of widespread mirth to a genuine worry about freedom of speech. The depressing thing about the women-in-science controversy was not the number of academics who disagreed with Mr Summers but the number who thought he had no right to raise the issue. Universities bristle with speech codes and absurd rules: until the Supreme Court intervened this week the army was prevented from recruiting on some campuses.

The other weakness, producer power, gets less attention, but it was at the heart of the war at Harvard. Put simply, many American universities treat their undergraduates shabbily. Harvard's core curriculum has gone unreformed for ages. Star professors fob their students off with graduate students who dole out inflated grades in order to keep them happy.

Mr Summers's solution to this was to try to reinforce the power of the president—the only person who can weigh the interests of the faculty against the interests of students. An even better way would be to abolish tenure, which guarantees academics jobs for life. At least an argument has started—but there is a long way to go. This week, Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences held its first meeting since ridding itself of its enemy; it was described as a “love fest” by one of its leaders.

This is must viewing if you have an interest in all the Mexican flags this weekend. In general, BloggingHeads with is essential viewing at least once a week. I think they should have me and Skippy up there. We would both be wearing burkas....but that's ok. It is the New Navy.

Sometimes, the best wisdom comes from The Master Chief.

If you are on your first deployment or 7th, it is a good read before going home to visit, or the 20th High School reunion.

Click here for the whole story.

Hat tip Chap.

Often it is best to let a leader speak for himself.

Good Afternoon, before I get into the guts of my remarks I want to spend a few moments acknowledging the people who made this special day possible.

To Laura McNett and Bob Crann at the Fleet Reserve Association – thanks so much for the use of the clubhouse. I cannot think of a more appropriate place to host this event. And don’t worry, I’ve had a few words with the boys and told them to go easy after the ceremony.

To all of my former shipmates, particularly Senior Chief Rob Enquist and Chief Tom Riley, and the rest of today’s ceremony participants. You are my brothers in arms.

To my fellow Veterans, I have reserved a special place in my heart for all of you. I have enjoyed interacting with you throughout my career, and I can never repay the debt of loyalty and support that you extended to me not only in my time of personal crisis, but also as I have worked through the transition to civilian life.

To all my family and friends who traveled great distances to be here today – words cannot do justice to the depth of my gratitude for you making such a monumental effort just to see me say goodbye to the Navy. I look forward to thanking you in a more personal way later today.

There are a few more people who I must mention by name. The two men sitting on the stage with me, Karl Hasslinger and Hass Moyer, and your lovely wives Donna and Katie. You all have taught me more about life, leadership, and friendship than any others. Also, my good friend Andy Hale who has just returned to the mainland from Guam. I’m truly blessed to have you as friends and I know we will continue our close relationships well beyond each others’ Navy years.

And of course, most important of all is my family: My brothers and sisters and my extended family, who are represented here today by two of my sisters, Kathy and Maureen, my Aunt Mary, and a cousin and Navy veteran himself, Neil Gallagher. My second family in Ireland, proudly represented today by the indomitable Joan D’Arcy, better known to the Western World simply as Mum. My Dad, who has cheered my Navy career from the sidelines for the past twenty years. And finally, my ladies, Avril, Laura and Tara. My speech would end abruptly if I even tried to explain out what my wife and kids mean to me. In short, you are my world, so we’ll leave it at that and I’ll get on with it –

I love the United States Navy. From the day I was sworn in as a midshipman with my good friend Bob Benford at the Duke University Navy ROTC program, the Navy has provided me one opportunity after another to lead a rewarding and fulfilling career and personal life. The Navy paid for my education at Duke that otherwise was well beyond my means as the fifth of seven children in a large Irish Catholic family from Long Island. After Duke, the Navy topped off my undergraduate education with its own special form of learning – nuclear power school. I hated it, and was happy to be shipped off to my first boat, USS BREMERTON based in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The Navy gives, but the Navy expects payback as well. As BREMERTON underwent an extended overhaul in Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, I processed hundreds of work permits and thousands of tagouts. I think it’s fair to say that I paid back the Navy for all its education and other opportunities.

There’s no place quite like a Navy shipyard. Let me give you one example of the types of serious problems I had to deal with in this environment: Nuclear power safety regulations dictate that we must have a precise status of the reactor plant at all times, so we maintain this large, laminated status board, which stands waist high right behind where the engineering duty officer conducts his daily business in the engine room. On this status board, we keep track of hundreds of valve positions with tiny grease pencil markings: an “x” means the valve is shut, and a “o” means the valve is open. Well, we kept losing status of valve positions and we couldn’t figure out why. We were always very diligent and formal in our communications and operating procedures. Finally, one day we noticed some black grease pencil markings on the backside of one of our more portly officers. Being well-trained in the art of “root cause determination” – Brad Buswell and I soon discovered it was a big butt that was getting us in trouble. I left these experiences much wiser and more astute, and fully ready for future assignments that would call on my problem solving skills.

All joking aside, I did learn a lot during my submarine first assignment. I had a great set of teachers on BREMERTON, including my first skipper, Red Dawg McMacken, who made a special point of spending many hours one-on-one with each of his officers. The effect was contagious, and that crew on BREMERTON was the most knowledgeable of all that I ever served with.

But we really need to look back at history to place my first submarine assignment into context. The Cold War was raging, and our Submarine Force was at its zenith in size and influence. Our exciting and relevant missions played a huge part in the eventual demise of the Soviet Union. I was lucky enough to participate in several of these missions on USS HONOLULU. At this time, submarines were universally acknowledged as one of our nation’s primary assets in the battle against communist tyranny.

So as my first sea tour came to a close, I was faced with the decision to either remain in the Navy or join the rank and file of everyday civilians. As already mentioned, I had repaid my debt to the Navy for the opportunities it had given me. In the end, it was not chasing Soviet submarines that drove my decision to stay in the Navy. It was something else – it was the opportunity to lead great people like the very Sailors who have honored me by showing up today. I came to recognize that I enjoyed leading men to accomplish difficult missions in challenging environments, so I set a new goal for myself: become the Captain of a nuclear submarine.

Next up was a shore assignment on exchange with the Royal Navy, which taught me that there were different, and in fact BETTER, ways of doing business than the US Navy way. During this assignment, I fought in the final stages of the Cold War from a busy headquarters directing US and Royal Navy submarines on special reconnaissance missions. I also managed special programs with our Dutch, Danish and German allies. In my plentiful free time – remember what I said about the Royal Navy having better ways than we Americans - my new wife Avril and I traveled throughout Europe.

Revitalized after two years with the Brits, my next assignment brought me back to Pearl Harbor, this time on a boat fresh from new construction and ready for operations, USS COLUMBUS. First as Combat Systems Officer and then as Engineer, I enjoyed great success with my COLUMBUS shipmates. Thanks to great people like Glenn Robinson, Tom Wieshar, Mike Heck and Tim Sielkop, we discovered how to achieve excellence while still maintaining the focus where it belonged: on the people. After over 3 years on COLUMBUS, I knew that one day the Navy would give me the opportunity to command a nuclear submarine.

However, there were more dues to pay before this would occur. After leaving COLUMBUS, I reported to the Pentagon, where I learned a new combat skill: powerpoint warfare. While in the Pentagon, I was fortunate enough to work in a position where I had access to senior submarine Admirals, who were faced difficult decisions affecting the future of our undersea fleet. Since the Cold War had ended, many submarines fell under the budget axe as part of the so-called “peace dividend.” Despite these hardships, we still won some important battles, such as authorizing a new class of fast attack submarines, known today as the VIRGINIA class, and figuring out what to do with 4 TRIDENT SSBNs that were due for early retirement, which today are being converted to SSGNs. My Pentagon experience challenged me in many new ways, but was valuable primarily in that it brought me into contact with Captain Karl Hasslinger and a slew of other top-notch naval officers.

I soon had my best view of the Pentagon – in my rear view mirror – and Avril and I accomplished yet another cross country move – this time to Bangor, Washington for my first exposure to the ballistic missile submarine community. On USS GEORGIA BLUE with Hass Moyer as my skipper, my XO tour was a blast. Hass patiently let me learn and grow into the job. He laughed off my minor administrative blunders, and set me loose to fix the nagging problem areas while he led from the front with a big stogey in his mouth. Hass always had his priorities straight and taught me look at all issues through the prism of leadership. We had a magical chemistry on that fine ship and GEORGIA BLUE quickly became the assignment of choice for Sailors on the Bangor waterfront.

Avril and I returned to England in 2001, this time for a truly international assignment on a NATO staff. Now some of you may think NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization - NOT TRUE. We never did settle on what the acronym NATO really denotes, but here were some of the contenders:
- Not At The Office
- Not After Two O’clock
- No Action Talk Only, and my personal favorite:
- Need Alcohol To Operate
All accurately describe NATO operations.

My most exciting day in NATO came when I received the phone call informing me of my next assignment: Commanding Officer of the USS City of Corpus Christi, based in Guam. Remember what I said about difficult missions in challenging environments? Well, I got it! And the mission would soon become even more difficult: COMSUBPAC re-directed me, along with several others, to the USS San Francisco. Despite SAN FRAN’s recent troubles, it soon became clear that I had gotten a great deal. SAN FRAN had a top notch and enthusiastic crew. Sure, there was a lot of work to do, but we dug in our heels and drove forward despite some huge challenges, particularly with the ship’s material condition and the inadequacy of Guam as a submarine home port. In just over a year, we had made remarkable progress. We steamed over 7000 miles from Guam to San Diego replace our propulsion shaft in a submarine drydock unavailable in Guam. We persevered through numerous ship's casualties including several major freon ruptures, a major electrical fire, two hydraulic ruptures, and on and on. Just like the SAN FRAN Creed states, we never gave up. We fixed the material problems, disciplined ourselves to operate efficiently and effectively, and finally went to sea for extended periods to conduct special reconnaissance operations. Just after being ranked as the best submarine in the Force in engineering readiness, we set off from Guam to Brisbane, Australia in January 2005. You all know how the cruel sea punished us during this journey, so I’ll bypass the details, but please allow me to shed some perspective on the events that followed. After suffering the worst possible shock in the history of nuclear submarine operations, every single Sailor on SAN FRANCISCO – yes, every single one – did his military duty. Some did much more than their duty and acted in truly heroic fashion: Matt Parsons, Craig Litty, Billy Cramer, Danny Hager, Jake Elder, Max Chia, Chris Baumhoff, Doc Akin, Gil Daigle, and more: Key, Miller, Pierce, Powell, Smoot, McDonald. I could go on. But one hero clearly stands above all the others, he was my favorite Sailor, and the one who I miss every day, Petty Officer Joey Ashley.

In the aftermath of our tragic grounding, we, the crew of SAN FRANCISCO, forged bonds that never can be broken:
– not by investigations, nor Admiral’s Mast, nor punishments
– not by grief, nor anger, nor sadness, and
– never by distance, space, or time
Why, you may ask, are these bonds so strong? Because as Chief Johnny Johnson surely would tell you, THERE ARE NO BONDS STRONGER THAN THOSE FORMED BY MEN WHO HAVE FACED DEATH TOGETHER. And on a very personal level, there is something even more remarkable: even though it was I who brought harm upon my men through my own shortcomings, today this room is filled with my SAN FRANCISCO brothers. Shipmates, I shall never forget your courage and loyalty and I was proud to serve as your Commanding Officer.

My final year in the Navy was spent under the command, for the second time, of my good friend, Hass Moyer. Hass warmly welcomed me to his staff at the Trident Training Facility, and gave me the freedom to work on a few projects while recovering from the wounds inflicted by that deadly uncharted sea mount. Outside of work, I kayaked among the orcas, became a soccer dad, ran a marathon, and prepared for my next career. In my new job, I will continue doing what I love most: Lead people to accomplish difficult missions in challenging environments. Avril and I hope to settle down after our next move for a long time, and give Laura and Tara some stability through their school years. We intend to be active in our local community, and share our time and talents with those less fortunate than ourselves. But most of all, we intend to love each other and be happy, just like we have done throughout our wonderful 15 years of marriage.

Let me finish now where I started: I love the United States Navy. But now it’s time to move on. Master Chief Sielkop, I am ready to be relieved.

If you are not familiar with the USS San Francisco incident, go here, or here for the background.

Hat tip reader T via Rontini's Submarine BBS.

More from the IHT. This is too funny.

A European Union summit meeting already overshadowed by concerns over economic nationalism turned into a linguistic battlefield when President Jacques Chirac of France, "deeply shocked" by the sight of a fellow Frenchman speaking English, stormed out of the room.

Chirac defiantly admitted Friday that he had bolted from the meeting the night before because Ernest-Antoine Seillière, the French head of the European business lobby Unice, was using the language of Shakespeare rather than the language of Voltaire.

When Seillière began addressing the EU's 25 leaders in English, Chirac interrupted him and asked why he was not using his mother tongue.

"I'm going to speak in English because that is the language of business," Seillière replied.

With that, Chirac, 73, stood up and left the room, flanked by his finance minister, Thierry Breton, and foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, officials present at the meeting said.

"I was deeply shocked to see a Frenchman express himself at the council table in English, that's why we left - so as not to have to listen to that," Chirac said as the meeting ended Friday.

You insecure goof. European "Union." Ha! And to think, in 2004 there were many that wanted to take this guy and "Gasprom Gerhard" seriously. I'll take Blair and Anzar any day.

Anytime Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaks, it pays to listen.

One United Nations estimate says from 113 million to 200 million women around the world are demographically "missing." Every year, from 1.5 million to 3 million women and girls lose their lives as a result of gender-based violence or neglect.

How could this possibly be true? Here are some of the factors:

Read the whole thing to hear the list. Funny how the Left is so silent on this. No, not funny - eye opening.

As always, she is right on target WRT the clash of civilizations. Whose side are you on?

The Islamists are engaged in reviving and spreading a brutal and retrograde body of laws. Wherever the Islamists implement Shariah, or Islamic law, women are hounded from the public arena, denied education and forced into a life of domestic slavery.

Cultural and moral relativists sap our sense of moral outrage by claiming that human rights are a Western invention. Men who abuse women rarely fail to use the vocabulary the relativists have provided them. They claim the right to adhere to an alternative set of values - an "Asian," "African" or "Islamic" approach to human rights.

This mind-set needs to be broken. A culture that carves the genitals of young girls, hobbles their minds and justifies their physical oppression is not equal to a culture that believes women have the same rights as men.

See what happens when you read RadioNetherlands online? Lots of "Glad I am not being led by this guy.." stories.

Speaking to Radio Netherlands as the first troops left for Afghanistan, the Netherlands' most senior military commander, General Dick Berlijn, referred to the difficult political debate which preceded the mission, but also to the broad level of political support that subsequently emerged:

"When our government asked parliament … to support this mission, there was overwhelming support. That is very important for our soldiers. Whether or not there is strong support in our society when we have the first casualties, is something to be seen."

Yep, we are talking about General "you need to retire to your coal mine" Berlijn....again. That's the way to send off the troops! Wow, Patton has nothing on you!

If you don't think the written word is bad enough, listen to the guy.

Miles to go before we sleep, NATO. Miles to go.

An Afghan supreme court judge holds a copy of Abdul Rahman's Bible, who would not now face the death sentance for refusing to convert back to Islam from Christianity.

We may have dodged a bullet on this one.....but think about this. Are there some cultures that are unredeamable? If so, what do you do with them? How do you keep them in their box without loosing your own soul?

Because, in the 21st Century, how do you come to a point of order with this:

"Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," said cleric Abdul Raoulf, who is considered a moderate and was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before the hard-line regime was ousted in 2001.
...
Senior Muslim clerics demanded Thursday that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity be executed, warning that if the government caves in to Western pressure and frees him, they will incite people to "pull him into pieces."

Very nice, the Religion of Pieces.

....I'll vote for you. This letter to the editor is so good, you have to read it all. Here is a tidbit.

I wish Bill Maher, Richard Belzer and the young adults of my generation who comment from campuses and talk shows all over the country and mistake knowledge for understanding could see what's really happening over there. I welcome their right to disagree, but I wish they would educate themselves well enough to disagree intelligently.

The clarity of a leader.

...Gen. Michael Maples, was testifying before Congress that the Taliban insurgency is growing and will increase this spring, presenting a greater threat to the Afghan central government's expansion of authority than at any point since late 2001. Under these circumstances, the current plan to replace the 2,500 U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan this spring with contingents of Canadian, Dutch, British, Romanian and Australian troops is a mistake. Given the intensifying Taliban insurgency, these allied forces should augment, not displace, U.S. forces. We should also reassess the administration's proposal to turn over the command of most U.S. troops in Afghanistan to NATO by early next year.

For a variety of reasons - NATO isn't ready for varsity football. The Brits and perhaps the Canadians would press the fight - but nothing like the American would. Fact. They just don't have the resources or national will. Remember, we were attacked from AF based terrorists - they weren't. They are just helping out a friend.

The anticipated withdrawal of U.S. forces has reportedly already caused some local leaders to hedge their bets with respect to the Taliban. Economic development has been slowed because, as Kunder testified, "our contractors are being targeted, and a number of them have been killed, making it more difficult for USAID to recruit appropriately qualified staff."

The people there are survivors who know how to read a change in the power structure.

We should never forget that the Taliban came to power in the chaos that followed the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the subsequent U.S. disengagement from the region. With the Bush administration and political Washington focused on Iraq, many Afghan leaders worry that the reduction of U.S. forces is a sign that we will again lose sight of Afghanistan. We do so at our peril. Let us not forget that the Sept. 11 plot was launched from Afghanistan, and not from Iraq.

It is one thing to prove the PaperTiger-ism of NATO in Darfur - Afghanistan is another thing altogether.

The Commissar has a good point about some of the problems the press is having when the numbers do not agree with their talking points about the war in Iraq.

I try to avoid ranting about the distortions of the MSM, but could not let this one pass. The author’s main point: “the average rate at which U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq has significantly fallen, the but the rates at which they are being wounded have dramatically increased.” wholly misrepresents the facts.

Under any ordinary definition of the word, Martin Sieff is lying. Viewed over any reasonable time frame (months), U.S. wounded are significantly down.

As always, you need to read the whole thing.

He includes a graph of the wounded:


High res here.

And I managed to get a different one that tell the story of those killed:


I don't like the whole body-count habit, but if the press is going to bring it up - they need to tell a fair story.

NB: FEB/MAR is historically a low point in wounded and killed. We should see a rise in APR/MAY. It is the long-term trend line, and The Commissar is right - wounded tell a more accurate story - that is important. If we do not see the deaths/wounded rise like we did last year as the warm weather comes - the "Iraq issue" may not be as big of a player for the Democrats this fall as they think.

One of my early BlogBuddies has left blogspot (quitter) and is now shack'n up over at WordPress. My dear Bookie is now experiencing a big dose of TTLB rejection.

Update your BlogRolls, click on over to BookWormRoom, and show Bookie you care. Did I mention update your BlogRolls?

For those who don't get the IBD; they have something to ponder. The Democrats are only 15 seats away. Very close, and with the pent-up historical swings they missed in '02 and '04 - pretty good chance they might win. What would it look like?

Should the House change hands, John Conyers would become chairman of the Judiciary Committee. ... Conyers would personify what would be the most liberal House of Representatives ever. A founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, he used the ’60s riots in his district of Detroit as a pretext to call for government-guaranteed income, and he opposed President Johnson on Vietnam as soon as he entered Congress in 1965.

The speaker of this liberal House would be San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi. Among her many left-of-center stands is her embrace of John Murtha’s call to bring the troops home from Iraq in six months. Murtha himself would likely resume his chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee. That means the man holding the Pentagon’s purse would believe “the vast majority of the Iraqi people now view (U.S. troops) as occupiers, not as liberators.”

The House Budget Committee would almost certainly be headed by John Spratt of South Carolina. He is Pelosi’s point man on the budget and an ardent opponent of Bush’s Social Security reform. Say goodbye to all hopes of taming entitlement spending. And say hello to possible tax hikes. Spratt thinks Bush’s father “did the right thing” in 1990 when he broke his “no new taxes” pledge.

The House Government Reform Committee would be chaired by Henry Waxman, from Los Angeles’ liberal west side. Last week, he accused Bush of “placing himself above the Constitution” for signing a budget resolution. Maybe Waxman could add “illegal budgeting” to Conyers’ articles of impeachment.

David Obey of Wisconsin, whom the Almanac of American Politics describes as “a true believer in traditional liberalism, Keynesian economics and economic redistribution,” is likely to return as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. At a post-9-11 Oval Office meeting, he is said to have told Bush to leave Congress’ big spenders alone because they’re such experts on legislation.

In George Miller, another San Francisco-area congressman, we’d have a shill of the public school teachers unions chairing the House Education and the Workforce Committee. Expect him to support union efforts to resist reform by suing the government.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee would be chaired by the infamously arrogant John Dingell. The 25-term representative of southeast Michigan is a strong proponent of punitive tax and regulatory measures against the oil industry.

And as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, how does Charles Rangel sound? In 2003, Harlem’s congressman claimed the Bush tax cuts “are not leading to economic growth (or) more jobs.” Since then, the economy has grown at a 3.5% clip with nearly 5 million new jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.8%.

In short, a Democrat-controlled House in 2007 won’t look anything like those run by Tip O’Neill and Tom Foley in the past. It would a radicalized, emboldened bunch out for blood — that of George W. Bush. Republicans downplay the threat at their peril — not to mention the peril of our economy and national security.

Have a nice evening!

This is a great example of where President Bush is in his element - unfiltered. He sure doesn't look like a guy ready to quit. In case you can't get the video below, here is the transcript.

Q This is my husband, who has returned from a 13-month tour in Tikrit.

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, yes. Thank you. Welcome back. (Applause.)

Q His job while serving was as a broadcast journalist. And he has brought back several DVDs full of wonderful footage of reconstruction, of medical things going on. And I ask you this from the bottom of my heart, for a solution to this, because it seems that our major media networks don't want to portray the good. They just want to focus -- (applause) --

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, hold on a second.

Q They just want to focus on another car bomb, or they just want to focus on some more bloodshed, or they just want to focus on how they don't agree with you and what you're doing, when they don't even probably know how you're doing what you're doing anyway. But what can we do to get that footage on CNN, on FOX, to get it on headline news, to get it on the local news? Because you can send it to the news people -- and I'm sorry, I'm rambling -- like I have --

THE PRESIDENT: So was I, though, for an hour. (Laughter.)
Q -- can you use this, and it will just end up in a drawer, because it's good, it portrays the good. And if people could see that, if the American people could see it, there would never be another negative word about this conflict.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate that. (Applause.) No, it -- that's why I come out and speak. I spoke in Cleveland, gave a press conference yesterday -- spoke in Cleveland Monday, press conference, here today. I'm going to continue doing what I'm doing to try to make sure people can hear there's -- why I make decisions, and as best as I can, explain why I'm optimistic we can succeed.

One of the things that we've got to value is the fact that we do have a media, free media, that's able to do what they want to do. And I'm not going to -- you're asking me to say something in front of all the cameras here. (Laughter.) Help over there, will you? (Laughter.)

I just got to keep talking. And one of the -- there's word of mouth, there's blogs, there's Internet, there's all kinds of ways to communicate which is literally changing the way people are getting their information. And so if you're concerned, I would suggest that you reach out to some of the groups that are supporting the troops, that have got Internet sites, and just keep the word -- keep the word moving. And that's one way to deal with an issue without suppressing a free press. We will never do that in America. I mean, the minute we start trying to suppress our press, we look like the Taliban. The minute we start telling people how to worship, we look like the Taliban. And we're not interested in that in America. We're the opposite. We believe in freedom. And we believe in freedom in all its forms. And obviously, I know you're frustrated with what you're seeing, but there are ways in this new kind of age, being able to communicate, that you'll be able to spread the message that you want to spread.

Here is the video.
Hat tip ExposeTheLeft via PowerLine.

I hope this gets the play it deserves. These rescues are important on a lot of fronts. BZ.

U.S.-led forces freed three Christian peace activists held hostage in
Iraq on Thursday in an operation mounted two weeks after the kidnappers tortured and killed their American colleague.

Canadians Jim Loney and Harmeet Sooden and 74-year-old British pacifist Norman Kember from the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) were snatched in west Baghdad in November.

The tortured body of American Tom Fox was found dumped in the capital two weeks ago.

More from DhimmiWatch. Those guys deserve a medal. Read it all.

In "Eurabian Nightmares" at FrontPage, Andrew Bostom, editor of the superlative Legacy of Jihad, reviews Bruce Bawer's equally important While Europe Slept:

Bruce Bawer’s 1997 Stealing Jesus decried the “claustrophobic narrowness” in American fundamentalist Christianity’s conception of the spiritual and divine. Bawer further maintained that its votaries “…breath taking combination of historical ignorance and theological certitude” had engendered a reductio ad absurdum literalist understanding of religion, effectively “..dispiriting…denying and dispelling…life’s mysteries.”

By September 1998, Bawer and his male partner decided to relocate permanently to Europe, initially Amsterdam. The Netherlands sociopolitical discourse, Bawer believed, had transcended “culture war platitudes” and “…the foolishness of fundamentalism”. Bawer recalls candidly his own angry assessment of the contrasting American discourse at the time he departed for Europe:

Yes I loved my country, but I also realized that I wanted to be away from it—away from the idiocy, the intolerance, the Puritanism. More and more, I felt I belonged in Europe.

While Europe Slept chronicles Bawer’s personal encounter with Europe’s ongoing Islamization since late 1998. And his riveting narrative is a testament to Bawer’s intellectual honesty. Shunning glib moral equivalences between America’s Christian fundamentalist movement, and the infinitely more radicalized and destructive Islam rapidly transforming a self-deluded Western Europe into Eurabia, Bawer was acutely aware, even prior to September 1, 2001 that

Europe was falling prey to an even more alarming fundamentalism whose leaders made their Protestant counterparts look like amateurs…Western Europeans had yet to even acknowledge that they had a Religious Right. How could they ignore it? Certainly as a gay man, I couldn’t close my eyes to this grim reality. Pat Robertson just wanted to deny me marriage; the imams wanted to drop a wall on me. I wasn’t fond of the hypocritical conservative-Christian line about hating the sin and loving the sinner, but it was preferable to the forthright fundamentalist Muslim view that homosexuals merited death.

Martyr is a word thrown around a lot by the followers of Mohammed (no peas upon him) and the rather radical followers of Al-lah. Now days though, it is helpful to review the Martyr we are used to, and should be honored; those who were killed, often in terrible ways, just because they said, "I am a Christian."

You don't have to look to far back though. Right now, Abdul Rahman is on trial in Afghanistan for doing just that, and they want to give him the death penalty.

If the AF government goes through with this - I will give a pass to any nation now in AF who wants to put their troops in a C-160 and go home. We can't leave, but that is our problems. It is a lot to expect Slovokia to put its men on the line to preserve a government that kills people just because they are Christians.

Oh, BTW, if you live near DC, Michelle has a couple of ideas for you. Here is a video about it for Michael - or anyone else that understands Dutch.

When you step back, America and Islamists have a history. You can go back 200 years,

At the dawn of a new century, a newly elected United States president was forced to confront a grave threat to the nation -- an escalating series of unprovoked attacks on Americans by Muslim terrorists. Worse still, these Islamic partisans operated under the protection and sponsorship of rogue Arab states ruled by ruthless and cunning dictators

Sluggish in recognizing the full nature of the threat, America entered the war well after the enemy's call to arms. Poorly planned and feebly executed, the American effort proceeded badly and at great expense -- resulting in a hastily negotiated peace and an equally hasty declaration of victory.

As timely and familiar as these events may seem, they occurred more than two centuries ago. The president was Thomas Jefferson, and the terrorists were the Barbary pirates.

...or 100 years...

Seven of the eight juramentados who had made the attack had succeeded in getting through the wire in the face of the fire. One lay dead outside the wire and seven were stretched out in the enclosure when morning came and we made inspection. The hospital was lined with terribly wounded men, slashed with barongs, and we were forced to kill many of the slashed horses who had been in the path of the charging Moros. The juramentados who had plunged through the wire in a desperate dive had left skin and clothes on the wire. They were horribly torn from head to foot by the long barbs. They were riddled with bullets, and many had heads bashed in and bayonet stabs. They lay there, with glittering eyeballs and bared black teeth. Their heads were shaven and their eyebrows were a thin line of hair.

Some might think that my little Battlestar Galactica swipe was snide.....but in a way, I was not kidding. Check out Chief Tyrol:

Now check out Petty Officer Ross:


Quota Era Demonstrata.

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BTW, Google Task Force Uniform. Where did they get that funny picture from...

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Nicholas Kristoff has done great work, often on his own, on Darfur – but he needs a military advisor to keep his credibility in line. He stepped in it the other day out of frustration and illustrated why so much of the commentary about military actions from the MSM is so bad – they really have no idea what they are talking about. It also explains how they often respond the way they do to the “fog of war” when things don’t go quite as planned. They never do, but they expect the military to be perfect.

One measure we could take would be to enforce a no-fly zone from the air base in Abéché, Chad. The president of Chad says he would be happy to have Americans do this, and it would be easy: instead of keeping airplanes in the air, we would simply wait until a Sudanese plane bombed a village, then strafe that plane on the ground afterward. (The first time, we would just damage the plane; we would destroy any after that.)

That is an impossible mission. Even Lex couldn’t make a strafing run like that. If you want action like that, I want to hear about your acceptance of POWs (ours) deaths (ours and theirs and their Chinese advisors) and the deaths of civilians (because that will always happen). Also I want your support when the “known unknowns” and the “unknown unknowns” happen after you start a war – which is what you are doing. Remember, the movie The Four Feathers took place in Sudan. These people aren’t that different.

If he really thinks any of this is possible, he needs to get some military friends to help him out to better understand the reality of warfare and the physics of breaking things and killing people. NK, drop me a line, I will be happy to help out next time, and stop you from walking around with your zipper down. Your heart and head are in the right place here.

No, I'm not converting, but two days in a row I have to give a respectful nod to the Army. I followed one of the links I found to the post from earlier about the Army and its book-learn'n....and where did it lead me but to a army.mil page called Stand-To!

That my friends is an official site. Look at today's (21 MAR 06) edition on the bottom right hand corner...they have a "WHAT'S BEING SAID IN BLOGS" section. And who is there, why 'lil Phibian's post.

Sad to say, perhaps it is there somewhere, but it is difficult for me to see this on a navy.mil site. Could you imagine a navy.mil blog corner that would link to (in lineal number methinks) Lex, Chap, Bubblehead, Eagle1, Skippy-san, Phib, and Yankee? That would be cool. Well, maybe not Skippy.....

Two pieces worth reading are out about Darfur, one in the NYT , and the other in its little sister the IHT. Both outline the truth about Darfur: the U.S. has decided to prove a point / give the Europeans and UN an opportunity to put up and shut up. They, are shutting up.

Very much from the, "You think you are so bright and better than everyone else, you do it..” line of thinking – after all the Monday morning quarterbacking and ankle biting from the Europeans over Iraq, with Darfur and Sudan we have decided to do things by their playbook and see how things go. Well, as expected:

When we talk about the genocide in Darfur, the one element that needs far more attention is the disgraceful role of Western Europe. … First, the European Union often presents itself, in alleged contrast to the United States, as the guardian of human rights in the world. Whatever the issue - capital punishment, gun control, avoiding war - the EU seeks to depict itself as occupying the moral high ground. The shamelessness of this posture in light of the inaction on Darfur must be exposed.
…
Now we need to state bluntly to Europe that the balance of the historical record lies in European hands. Europe can either join the United States in an aggressive campaign to place substantial forces in Darfur to prevent an even greater tragedy or continue on its current path and be held accountable for the consequences.

Indeed, given Europe's inaction on Darfur, the question must be asked: Is there truly a new Europe?

This all remind me of when I played Pee Wee football. When I started my mediocre career as a Left Defensive End after a stint as an 8yr old Offensive Lineman, we were scrimmaging one afternoon when the talented (but spoiled) 9yr old quarterback kept yelling at the offensive line and complaining that they were worthless and he was so cool, etc, etc… Well, in conjunction with the defensive line, the offensive line led by the Center (who as an adult is not a Trial Lawyer…go figure) decided to make a point. On the second down I think it was, one he hiked the ball, the offensive line would just stand still and the Backs (also in on the game) would run for the sidelines. That would give the Defence an open shot at the QB. Well, like all 9 yr old boys, we derived great pleasure in making the QB cry, and taught him a lesson about leadership and the value of the Offensive Line. True, when not laughing, the coaches yelled at us and made us run forever afterwards, but I don’t think I have ever had a better memory of Pop Warner football.

Unfortunately, we are doing the same thing to the Europeans, but instead of sweat and tears, the cost here are hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of lives destroyed. This serves a greater purpose: imagine a world without America. I know a lot like to. Be careful what you ask for. From the Left or Right – or both: we are very close to going back to the “hell with you all” attitude of 100 years ago. Think about it; we are. Scoring short term political points can have long term consequences.

Hat tip Big Pharaoh.

While we are doing the anniversary thing - time to talk about NSFS again. Not Vietnam or WWII, but OIF. Three years ago, we have all the info we need to justify both the 155mm and 8", (even though in this case it was all 5") if we want to look at it. There are also lessons here on the LCS tradeoff between questional draft, speed and main gun tradeoff - and just the fundamentals of seamanship and Naval warfare. THIS is littoral warfare.

At 0604 on March 21 HMAS Anzac (CAPT Peter Lockwood), often called the ‘Lighthorse’, began Naval gunfire in direct support of the British-led Royal Marine 40 Commando assault on Al Faw Peninsula in southern Iraq.

Full story here. More info on the OP here and here. And if you really like good gun work....

Labels: Iraq, NSFS

If you are a subscriber to the WSJ, there was an article about some new and old books that are becoming required reading; one was given to SECDEF Rumsfeld by General Casey when SECDEF visited Iraq recently - Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife : Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam by Lt. Col. John Nagl.

Also on the reading list for Phibian are A Better War by Col. Lewis Sorley, and Andrew Krepinevich's The Army In Vietnam and the book that I should have already read, Dereliction of Duty by Col. H.R. McMaster.

If you think Rumsfeld only surrounds himself with sycophants - then General Casey wouldn't have given him this book.

Being that the Navy leadership is more concerned with dressing us like the folks on Battlestar Galatica, getting jobs with defense contractors after they retire, and chasing down LT's that have a potty mouth that wouldn't even have been noticed on any of the ships they commanded as LCDR, CDR, and CAPT - I am going to have to spend more time watching, and reading, as the Army leadership does some serious intellectual lifting as they build towards the USMC standard.

Yes, that swipe sounded cynical, but I am serious. The Army is being forced to change because it was challenged and found lacking. Good on them. The Navy has not been challenged at sea, yet is not trying to leverage the fundamental failings that the Army has relearned - so that when we are challenged we don't have Sailors die because we wished away the lessons of the past. Damage control. Manning for extended combat operations. Multi-mission capabilities. Weapons reliability in a realistic environment.....to name a few.

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UPDATE: The good folks at The Corner like it too....and they cut and pasted some goodie.

Col. Nagl's book is one of a half dozen Vietnam histories -- most of them highly critical of the U.S. military in Vietnam -- that are changing the military's views on how to fight guerrilla wars. Two other books that have also become must-reading among senior Army officers are retired Col. Lewis Sorley's "A Better War," which chronicles the last years of the Vietnam War, and Col. H.R. McMaster's "Dereliction of Duty," which focuses on the early years.

The embrace of these Vietnam histories reflects an emerging consensus in the Army that in order to move forward in Iraq, it must better understand the mistakes of Vietnam.

In the past, it was commonly held in military circles that the Army failed in Vietnam because civilian leaders forced it to fight a limited war instead of the all-out assault it longed to wage. That belief helped shape the doctrine espoused in the 1980s by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Colin Powell. They argued that the military should fight only wars in which it could apply quick, overwhelming force to destroy the enemy.

The newer analyses of Vietnam are now supplanting that theory -- and changing the way the Army fights. The argument that the military must exercise restraint is a central point of the Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine. The doctrine, which runs about 120 pages and is still in draft form, is a handbook on how to wage guerrilla wars.

It offers Army and Marine Corps officers advice on everything from strategy development to intelligence gathering. Col. Nagl is among the four primary authors of the doctrine. Conrad Crane, a historian at the U.S. Army War College, is overseeing the effort.

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Welcome aboard Army types! Honored to be on the 21 MAR 06 Stand-to. Oh, and your service has a great reading list and writing tradition. Support it. The Navy could learn a lot. (you didn't read that)

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Saw this earlier today and was reminded of it while trolling Bubblehead's blog (re: the title). Saw this coming 10 months ago.

Mentally ill service members are being returned to combat.

The redeployments are legal, and the service members are often eager to go. But veterans groups, lawmakers and mental-health professionals fear that the practice lacks adequate civilian oversight. They also worry that such redeployments are becoming more frequent as multiple combat tours become the norm and traumatized service members are retained out of loyalty or wartime pressures to maintain troop numbers.

Sen. Barbara Boxer hopes to address the controversy through the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health, which is expected to start work next month. The California Democrat wrote the legislation that created the panel. She wants the task force to examine deployment policies and the quality and availability of mental-health care for the military.

If you have not already, you need to read B.G. Burkett's book Stolen Valor. Once you do that, then you can tell me I am full of crap.

Labels: Stolen Valor

I don't like to call a Brother out: but this has got to be the worst comment on Anti-Submarine Warfare I have read since, "Flaming datums are good in that you now where the sub is; well a few miles from - awhile ago." (junior officer on qualification board circa 2000)

On Monday, Capt. Thomas Carney, Mobile Bay's skipper, told reporters as he monitored the underwater hunt from his combat information center that since the exercise began on Sunday a picket line of helicopters, P3-Orions and his ship and two frigates had been able to track "some of the submarines."

"We are trying to locate him and keep as far away from the aircraft carrier as possible," Carney said. "The best defense is to keep as far away as possible." Donnelly said diesel electric submarines are "quieter and harder to find. It's a skill that our sailors need to practice in order to maintain proficiency."

He added that the primary target in the Cold War were Soviet nuclear submarines, which were faster and noisier and spent all their time in deeper waters. Perkins said a diesel sub works in shallower waters and needs to poke its periscope above the ocean surface to replenish its air supply and recharge its batteries. He added that time is on their side in the game to outwit their underwater adversaries.

"We don't always know where the sub is," Perkins said, "but we know what their goals are, and we can just sit out there and just wait for him."

Like the sub guys don't have enough to laugh about. I bet he's a AAW guy by nature.

Just a few things here.

1 - The Cold War ended about 15 years ago. Shut up about it, it sounds like we haven't done anything about the submarine threat since.....mmmmm.

2 - OK, it is the Sir Robin ASW tactic. Farragut would be so proud.

3 - And they don't get much experience in conventional submarines...because....WE HAVE NUKES PRETENDING TO BE THEM......

4 - Bubblehead, back me up on this, but: (a) their goal is to sink ships. (b) if you sit out there and wait for them you just made the target motion analysis easier.

OK, if this is part of some INFO OPS or PSYOPS campaign to make the ChiComs too cocky, then all is well. Wait, we can't do that with domestic press. Oops. Sigh.

The trailer is out for Mel Gibson's new movie, Apocalypto. I have high hopes, it starts with this quote from Will Durant. Most info is hard to get to, but the story goes,

Time to beat up on Time magazine; again. So let's do some pondering here. There is a military operation describes thusly:

...over 50 helicopters to put 1500 Iraqi and U.S. troops on the ground had netted 48 suspected insurgents, 17 of which had already been cleared and released. The area, explained the officials, has long been suspected of being used as a base for insurgents operating in and around Samarra, the city north of Baghdad where the bombing of a sacred shrine recently sparked a wave of sectarian violence. ... no shots fired at all and the units had met no resistance,...With the Interior Ministry's Samarra commando battalion, the soldiers had found some 300 individual pieces of weaponry like mortars, rockets and plastic explosives in six different locations inside the sparsely populated farming community of over 50 square miles and about 1,500 residents. The raids also uncovered high-powered cordless telephones used as detonators in homemade bombs, medical supplies and insurgent training manuals.

OK, we have a net of 31 terrorists, met no resistance from anyone, the operation was run mostly by the Iraqi Army. No civilians harmed, a metric butt-ton of bad guy boob-boom stuff captured. And what is the spin from Time's Copperhead reporter Brian Bennett?

...no leading insurgents were nabbed in an operation that some skeptical military analysts described as little more than a photo op. ... Before loading up into the helicopters for a return trip to Baghdad, Iraqi and American soldiers and some reporters helped themselves to the woman’s freshly baked bread, tearing bits off and chewing it as they wandered among the cows. For most of them, it was the only thing worthwhile they’d found all day.

By your definition or the Army personnel on the ground you interviewed.

I guess he would be much happier if they found nothing, a bunch of Americans were killed, the Iraqi Army ran away and threw off their uniforms, a couple of Blackhawks went down due to faulty maintenance, and he got live footage of civilians having electrical cables attached to their genitals. Oh, yes: he would be a lot happier.

If you like his stuff, keep throwing your cash at that magazine, or save yourself some money and read some of his buddies so popular with liberal AirAmerica type radio. Same type of crap.

Oh, the Time anger doesn't just come from me, either. I wonder if Jason will weigh in?

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...and he does. Kind the final word.

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Yes, being a SWO runs in families....

Like the Democrats "open-the-door-in-your-face" plan for '06 (the Republicans really have their pants around their ankles - but the Dems are not playing smart. They could have a huge sweep - remember the corrections of '02 and '04 didn't happen, there is pent-up demand - they have a 50/50 chance of taking one house of Congress, where they should have a 75% chance of taking both) the anti-war left just can "Stop Thinking About Yesterday." Remember the key to the playbook; if your plan fails - just do it again until everyone is as smart as you are.

"Big" protests this weekend (yawn). Any new ideas there Lefty, or are we still stuck in a late 2003/early 2004 mindset? Powerline and LGF have some good overviews of the parade of cluelessness. I think the picture on the left kind of says it all.
More than ever, I have comfort knowing I am on the right side, as imperfect as it is.

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UPDATE:Ego had more fun than I did. Cheeky monkey!

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Some people just don't know when to say quit.

A vessel was seen towing two smaller skiffs, the officials said. As boarding teams prepared to conduct a routine boarding, the Navy ships noticed the suspected pirates brandished what appeared to be rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

The suspected pirates then opened fire on the Navy ships. The two ships returned fire with small arms, the officials said.

One suspected pirate was killed and a fire ignited aboard the main vessel. The boarding teams took 12 other suspects, including the five who were injured, into custody, they said.

A Darwin candidate. Want to know what they opened fire on?

The incident occurred in the Indian Ocean about 25 miles off the coast of Somalia as the USS Cape St. George, a guided missile cruiser, and the USS Gonzalez, a guided missile destroyer, conducted maritime security operations.

Hat tip PolitburoDiktat.

So Lefty, who do you want to train out Southern Neighbors? Communist China or the American Military.

China is stepping up military training in Latin America because of a law that limits U.S. military support to nations in the region, the general in charge of the U.S. Southern Command told Congress yesterday.
...
The People's Republic of China has made many offers, and now we are seeing those who formerly would come to the United States going to China."
...
The lack of training has prevented sharing U.S. military "attributes and characteristics" with foreign militaries, including concepts of military subordination to civilian leaders, and principles of democracy, he said.

Ahhhhh, unintended consequences.

Additionally, Chinese economic activities are increasing in Canada, the Pentagon official said, noting that the activities in the hemisphere are part of a "counter-encirclement" strategy by Beijing, aimed at neutralizing what China views as a U.S. policy of building up bases and alliances in nations around China.

Exactly what I would do.

Oh happy day! I always wanted a fatwa, but being banned in Pakistan....why THAT IS JUST TOO COOL! My off-the-cuff DrawMohammedWeek has no-shit-Shirlock been banned by the Pakistan government.

Sometimes, you have to judge yourself by your enemies. Oh happy day!!

Dr. Rusty Shackleford is not pleased. I'm going to go have a Dunkle, and maybe something pork to go with it - and share it with my dog.

I'm just giddy as a schoolgirl.

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UPDATE:Why didn't I think of this?

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I know, it is kind of like Holiday in Cambodia.

Something tells me this won't be on the Bill Dance show, or be an MWR approved event.

Hey, the horse is way out of the barn, but at least they are trying.

Is it wet or dry in the Netherlands? One of the hundred questions in the exam for migrants from outside the European Union who want to settle in the Netherlands. From now on the exam is obligatory. Newcomers have to report to the Netherlands embassy in their home country where they take the test using voice recognition computer software. If you fail, you don't get a temporary residence permit. A number of journalists from the Dutch, English, Indonesian and Spanish departments of Radio Netherlands had a go.

What is a typical feature of Dutch traffic? "Bumper-hugging," grins one of the Indonesian journalists. "No, the answer is bicycles of course," her Dutch colleague responds.

The questions are about the Dutch language, geography, history, healthcare, the political system, relations between men and women and homosexuality. Is hitting women permitted or an offence?

Depends.....oh, and some people are already trying to upset their Belgian maybe-neighbors

What is the most important law in the Netherlands? "I've no idea," sighs a journalist from Costa Rica. He checks with a colleague from the English department. "The constitution?" she wonders. "When I arrived in this country all I knew about Holland was cheese and smurfs," adds the Spanish candidate jokingly, "You know, those little blue men". He thinks would-be immigrants will find the questions pretty tough.

Don't tell Michael! He is very protective of the Belgian-ness of his "Little Blue People."

And, the video is quite cheeky, (BTW, if anyone has I copy of it, email it please).

The camera focuses on two gay men kissing in a park. Later, a topless woman emerges from the sea and walks onto a crowded beach. For would-be immigrants to the Netherlands, this film is a test of their readiness to participate in the liberal Dutch culture.

If they can't stomach it, no need to apply.

No word on the wooden shoe requirement.

I'm talking to you Turkeyhead. For this, I might have to bring DrawMohammedWeek out of mothballs for a quick deployment.

I write to you today, not with a request, but with a demand. I’ve been sitting back patiently while the NEA has been promoting anti-Christian “art” for a number of years. In fact, one could say that I have been supporting it, too, given that my tax dollars have been spent on this garbage. And maybe I’ve been supporting it in another way by refusing to write you to express my frustration. That is, until now.

In the spirit of the “separation of church and state,” my demand is that you commission a painting – fully funded with tax dollars – that has one intention and one intention only: To offend Muslims everywhere.

This new painting will help the NEA avoid any accusations of state sponsorship of religion by insulting some religion other than Christianity. In the past, you’ve supported the “Piss Christ” and the “Elephant Dung Mary.” Now, I’m asking you to fund the “Queer Muhammad.”

For this painting, I want the artist to put the Prophet Muhammad in a pink bathrobe. I also want him holding a little toy poodle. Finally, I would like you to feature him reading a copy of “Playgirl” magazine. If you want to get daring, you can also feature him French-kissing Salmon Rushdie. Or better yet, feature him French-kissing Jacques Chirac.

Send your creative projects to my email address, or add a link to it in the comments. Quality, oh heck any who at least meet the requirements, will be posted at DrawMohammedWeek.

Hat tip Chap.

Go to PowerLine for some good links, but I am so sick of telling folks the sky is blue, water is wet, and Iraq was a clear and present danger that I just don't have the energy to do anything but say, "Read the damn things yourself."

I know I have about a dozen or so hits from the UK a day, and even more within a couple hours train from London, so this is about all I can do is free blogspace.

Check out the site MarchForFreeExpression for the lastest info; and if you can - be there on the 25th. Pack a pork sandwitch. You might get hungry.

If we had a personnel system that wasn’t so rigidly mortibund, perhaps he would have done something like Churchill on 15 NOV 1915, but alas, he can’t. In my book though, this works.

What they don't hear much about are the quiet events and private meetings that often take place in the Oval Office between President George W. Bush and military families. Or the Friday-night steak dinners local restaurateurs throw for wounded vets from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
...
I happened upon a large dining room filled with about 125 people, including many wounded soldiers in wheelchairs or on crutches. I also noticed a couple of suits by the door wearing wires.

I introduced myself and asked who in the room required security. They weren't in the mood to say, apparently, but suggested that I'd probably be able to figure it out. In a room full of camouflage and amputees, it was easy to spot a man in a dark suit casually grasping a Corona neck.
...
The man in business attire was Dr. Paul Wolfowitz, former deputy defense secretary and now head of the World Bank. ... you can find Wolfowitz here most Friday nights -- at least twice a month -- meeting with the wounded and hearing their stories. No fanfare or fuss, which is why many outside of Washington don't know about it.

The family comes too.

Sgt. Edward Wade, who has been traveling between his home in Chapel Hill, N.C., and Walter Reed for the two years since his "alive day" -- what wounded soldiers call the day they didn't die -- was less fortunate. He lost his right arm when an IED exploded and suffered enough brain damage that he wasn't expected to live.

His spunky wife, Sarah, does most of the talking and has high praise for Wolfowitz. "Of all the people, Dr. Wolfowitz is the first who has met the faces of the people who were wounded in the war," she said. ". . . He's more the student now. He learns from us."

Things come to mind like ”Action walks, bullshit talks...” or what Papa Salamander taught me, “Son, I don’t care what they say, watch what they do.”

Whatever one may observe with 20/20 hindsight, any appraisal of Wolfowitz is incomplete without a visit to Fran O'Brien's on Friday nights. There you might also bump into the Wades and hear that on Feb. 14, they were celebrating the second anniversary of Edward's "alive day" when the telephone rang.

It was Dr. Wolfowitz.

Bravo Zulu.

Well, kind of – not really – but close; on shipbuilding at least. (though I do know that people in his office read CDR Salamander).

"I personally have engaged the company at senior levels," Mullen told defense reporters, "and have been assured that they know they didn't do that well" and that they should not repeat the poor performance. "That assurance is important to me."

I know that sounds thin, but read the whole thing and you see that for his position - he did put them on report at least. I like this CNO more and more (whole uniform thingy aside). He even agrees with me on the USS San Antonio fiasco.

"We have struggled at times with the contractor in terms of delivering ships on time and some of the quality of the work," Mullen said.

Congress initially approved $953 million for the USS San Antonio and $762 million for the second ship in the class, LPD-18, for a total of $1.7 billion for both ships.

But costs have surged, and the price tag for both ships now is expected to come to $2.7 billion, an estimated $1 billion over budget.

The GAO is warning that costs could creep up another $300 million by the time both ships are ready for deployment.

Sir, still no one fired.

Labels: CNO, Shipbuilding

Sad, it isn't a real one. A candidate even Skippy would like; the Democrats stepped on their crank and stabbed in the back a guy I like, but wouldn't vote for, Paul Hackett.

Showing more balls than the Junior Senator from MD, Hackett speaks his mind as well as has a sense of humor. He went on The Daily Show and ended up doing the below spoof.

I don't care if he would have voted like a Kennedy (OK, I do), he would have been fun in the Senate. And even better, Mrs. Salamander says he looks like my brother. Maybe I could get better orders next time...

Watch the whole thing from The Daily Show.

Hat tip Wonkette (shocker).

The difference an election makes.

Say this for Stephen Harper. Unlike Paul Martin, he knows why he wants to be prime minister. He didn't run for the job just to get the job.

Harper's decision to make his first foreign trip as PM a surprise, morale-boosting visit to our troops in Kandahar is a bold statement of how he intends to redefine Canada's place in the world, post-9/11.

No longer will our military be viewed at home or abroad simply as "peacekeepers." Instead, they will be peacemakers, fighting and killing those who threaten Canadian security, values and interests abroad, while carrying out the tough job of "nation-building."

This is the difficult balancing act our soldiers are attempting in Kandahar -- meeting Taliban insurgents with deadly force while trying to win the trust of the civilian population by establishing the secure conditions under which humanitarian aid ("reconstruction") can begin.

Harper stated this vision in his speech to our soldiers when he told them Canada "can't lead from the bleachers."

Good job by the PM. Oh, and he spent the night.

"These are a great bunch of men and women who are doing a tough job and I'm going to make sure they understand their government [supports them]."

The Prime Minister is expected to address the troops Monday and officially tour the base where he stayed Sunday night. Mr. Harper planned to share lunch with Forces personnel Monday. Canada has 2,200 soldiers here.

A very good write up by John from Argghhh, but I do have one little different take than he has on General Hillier, great that he went and all...but....

Canada's top soldier was helping with work on the ground in Afghanistan Friday when a roadside bomb went off just 800 metres from where he was chatting with a village elder.

Gen. Rick Hillier, the chief of the defence staff, was whisked away in an armoured vehicle. A U.S. Blackhawk helicopter picked him up from the army's forward operating base in Gumbad, and took him to Kandahar.

The village elder, I am sure, was not impressed. 800 metres, no danger. Sigh.

That is just bad form, especially in that part of the world. It would have done everyone a bit better if he had taken a lesson from Patton and shrugged it off (his security guy must have had a hissy-fit); instead - he reminds me of a song.

The good thing, he made Prime Minister Harper look even stronger.

I read it online, and when I find it in an airport, I buy it .... and as it worth it sometimes. Lookie what I found in the center of the IHT on the 14th. So good I had to take it home. The executive story is Georgetown and Harvard took $200 million from a Saudi Prince who also gives money to, well you know. Interesting that they call it the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown and Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard. We can give the pass to Harvard because they are hopeless, but there are some interesting things to ask Georgetown. The following.

The Center's mission is to improve relations between the Muslim world and the West and enhance understanding of Muslims in the West.

Mmmmm. No mention of the Joooossssss. Shocker there. Also, I wonder if the Prince will like Georgetown to get an answer about how in Saudi Arabia there is little "Muslim-Christian" understanding, as there are not Churches and if you try to be a Christian, you will wind up dead or in prison. That's a start. Finally, here is a picture of the add. High res here.


Notice what I noticed? No crosses at Harvard, but darn it, with all the infidel Jesuits at Georgetown, it is just too hard to get a good picture of without a cross. See the little crescent moon in the upper right hand corner. I don't have my celestial tables, but my guess is that we have a little subtle photoshop action going on here.

Nice Dhimmi. Oh, I almost forgot. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud? Yea, your memory is right. He is the one Giulani told to put his money where the sun doesn't shine.

Please, please let him join NROTC in time to do a WESTPAC MIDN cruise next summer and find his way in a bar in Singapore with Skippy-san. PUUUHHHLLLEEEZZZ!!!!

Bill from INDC is right, amusing Apples and Trees going on. I am so glad no one has video of me when I was 19.

It requires a premium subscription to The Economist to read it all; but from the 25 FEB issue was one of the best descriptions about why the Europeans (and others) just don't understand the U.S. and its complexity, and therefore have no problem finding something to hate - if they try hard enough. I would love to hear Michael's opinion.

Foreigners ... have oddly confused views of America as a land of “Puritans and pornographers”—and that confusion makes fighting anti-Americanism extremely difficult.

“Puritans and pornographers” is a caricature, of course. But provided you adopt a broad definition of both Puritanism and pornography—with Puritanism standing for religion and pornography standing for popular culture—it is not an absurd one. America is a strikingly effective producer of popular culture. It not only makes more of it than any other country; it also produces more in-your-face culture—loud mouthed, libidinous and impossible to ignore. Yet it also stands out from other developed countries when it comes to resisting secularisation. America is the only modern country where most people belong to a religious organisation and where some 90% believe in God.

Arguably, America's religiosity and its popular culture spring from the same commitment to free markets. Its churches, no less than its film studios, have thrived precisely because they have never been shackled to the state and thus have to compete for customers. But whatever their common roots, pornography and Puritanism produce very different sorts of anti-Americanism.

For many Euro-secularists, America's religiosity is its least attractive characteristic. They can't believe that any modern person can be religious unless they are either stupid (Britain's Private Eye dubs George Bush the leader of the “Latter Day Morons”) or insane (a former German chancellor was known to accuse Mr Bush of “hearing voices”). The Pew Research Centre's survey of global attitudes last year discovered that most French and Dutch, as well as pluralities of Britons and Germans, think America is too religious.

Yet many cultural conservatives dislike America for exactly the opposite reason—because it is a battering ram for popular culture.
...
What makes the “pornography” and the Puritanism so hard to take for foreigners is that America is so aggressive at exporting both of them. With pop culture, this is well documented. The perennial tedium of the Oscars ceremony won't prevent millions of people from watching it. But America is also a world-beater when it comes to exporting religion. Pentecostalism, which started off at a Bible college in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901, is now the world's fastest-growing religion, with 500m followers. There are more than 140,000 American missionaries around the world and American-style mega-churches are beginning to appear in Europe. Meanwhile, in Congress, evangelicals are taking the lead in shaping American policy on aid and human rights.

One way of looking at this is that Mr Hunter's culture wars are now going global. That is partly because the battles between pornographers and Puritans in America rivet outsiders: who could not fail to be interested in the Kansas attorney-general who wants to be informed whenever there is “compelling evidence” of sexual interaction involving teenagers in his state? But there is also a deeper reason: many other countries are having to grapple with the problems America has.

This may be most obvious in the developing world, where traditional societies will inevitably have to endure their own version of America's culture wars as they get richer. But secular Europe has also recently discovered that it has not “outgrown” religious conflict—whether it be Christians complaining about the blasphemous BBC or the continent's ever larger and more assertive Muslim population complaining about cartoons. As in so many other aspects of anti-Americanism, the schizophrenic fury against pornographers and Puritans is a twisted compliment; America is once again leading the way.

Pushing the ROE envelope a bit here. Doing my normal tour of Drudge and The Corner , I ran across Senator Stabenow's rush for the spotlight. Looking at the picture on the left, I thought - that doesn't look like the Senator, there must be a problem with the picture. But a quick google search says; well - no.

I remember. Mmmmm; methinks. If you go over to Emily's List recommended candidates, you find the picture on the right. Now that is the Senator I remember.

Not that there is anything wrong with it; I went over to the public servant's website to see more pictures, when I thought I saw a picture of her and her son. She has grown into a nice matronly grandmother type. That is great. Love them bunches, have one of my own. Oooopppsss! My bad. That is her new husband, Tom Athans with her on the left (pun intended).

More things bounced around my head. Why do I know that name? Ahhh ha! You old DC folks will remember that he served as a staffer in the United States Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. So that is where they met. Oh, more fun stuff happened in his political life, after a stint at DemocracyRadio he now is at AirAmerica.

DC is such a fun town. The little slices of life that are just a click away.....

The Slovene author Slavoj Zizek stumbled on the truth the other day in the IHT. Sad thing is, he doesn’t know it. Being very serious, he offers up a cluster of Self-delusion titled, “Atheism is a legacy worth fighting for.” You really can’t make this stuff up. Being a Zeuropean Leftist though, “fighting” is a metaphor for something just shy of extending your neck before the sword.

“Today, when religion is emerging as the wellspring of murderous violence around the world, assurances that Christian or Muslim or Hindu fundamentalists are only abusing and perverting the noble spiritual messages of their creeds ring increasingly hollow. What about restoring the dignity of atheism, one of Europe's greatest legacies and perhaps our only chance for peace?”

Yes, the great European atheists. They have brought so much to the world in the last 100 years. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler; just the Top 3. Should we continue?

“…Europe's most precious legacy … atheism? What makes modern Europe unique is that it is the first and only civilization in which atheism is a fully legitimate option, not an obstacle to any public post.”

And what has this given Europe? Deathbed demographics that results in a culture that is dying out, and a culture that is focused only on their own “now” and not sacrifice for a future that is more secure.

“The only political force that does not reduce them (Muslims) to second-class citizens and allows them the space to express their religious identity are the "godless" atheist liberals, while those closest to their religious social practice, their Christian mirror-image, are their greatest political enemies.”

Oh how frustrated he must feel. Being that there are so few Communists around to help the EuroLeft hate itself and its Western Freedoms – it has latched on the next best enemy of itself – Islamofascism. Funny thing happened on the way to the protest…you find out the Islamofascist hate you too. Oh, and they want your women Burka’d, enslaved, pregnant, and in the kitchen messing with chickpeas.

He just can’t wrap around the fact he can’t do to Muslims what he does to Christians…

“What about submitting Islam - together with all other religions - to a respectful, but for that reason no less ruthless, critical analysis? This, and only this, is the way to show a true respect for Muslims: to treat them as adults responsible for their beliefs.”

What about is Slavoj? Lead from the front there pal. Grab your crayons and start drawing. Go to the Mosque as talk about “dialog” and what march you want to do next.

Oh, one last thing there, bud. When was the last time a “Christian Fundamentalists” hijacked passenger aircraft? Tortured and killed hostages on video? Blew up trains, busses, and used their own children as weapons? When?

Moral relativism is a tricky thing.

Dhimmi watch is on fire. Sober up.

Avi Davis is a journalist based in Los Angeles. Here is his keen-eyed assessment of the situation in Europe:

In his work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the historian Edward Gibbon describes how a vacillating Roman Senate, with the army of the Barbarian Goths at its city gate, debated fretfully about the Roman Empire’s future. Apparently unknown to them, a civil rebellion, led by slaves and domestics, had erupted within the city walls, leading to anarchy. Days after the appearance of the enemy, the gates were opened from within and the Barbarians poured in to pillage Rome. Within a week, 1100 years of empire building had come to a close.

Sixteen hundred years after that epochal event, it should surprise no one that new barbarians threaten the safety and security of the continent Rome once controlled When the body of Ilan Halimi turned up last week on a railway track outside of Paris the group responsible was identified as the Barbarians. Yet these were not Goths, Huns or Vandals of ancient times, but Muslim criminals whose intent was clearly to commit a racial murder. The torture to which Halimi was subjected and the methods with which he was eventually dispatched should remind everyone in Europe of the original provenance of the term “barbarian” -- that of men intent on destruction of centers of Western culture and civilization.

I'll say it again. The Dubai port fiasco was just that; American rascist politics at its worst. Want to know why so many professionals were against killing it the way we did from the start? VodkaPundit knows.

A little reality check here Shipmates; when you vomit petrodollars all over the world and buy up all the Chinese crap Walmart can sell - don't be shocked when a bunch of 3rd World types have you by the short-hairs. You exposed yourself.

Oh, John is still pi$$ed too.

Things continue to go the right way WRT Indian (dot not feather) and American relations. Henry Kissinger has a great review. You can tell he is happy.

NEW YORK President George W. Bush's visit to India has brought relations between the United States and India to an unprecedented level of cooperation and interdependence.

It is strange that this relationship should have taken so long to develop. Both countries are democracies. English is India's working language, and the educated classes speak it with rhetorical flourish. The Indian bureaucracy is well trained and competent, albeit slow-moving.

Yet until very recent years, relations between the two great democracies have been wary. It is important to understand the reasons if the new relationship is to realize the opportunity before it.
...
Americans think of their country as "the shining city on the hill"; its political institutions are perceived to be both unique and relevant to the rest of the world as guarantees of universal peace. Crusades on behalf of democracy have been implicit in American political thinking and explicit in American policy periodically since Woodrow Wilson - and especially pronounced in the George W. Bush administration.

That is not the way Indians view their international role. Hindu society does indeed also consider itself unique but, in a manner, dramatically at variance from America's. Democracy is not conceived as an expression of Indian culture but as a practical adaptation, the most effective means to reconcile the polyglot components of the state emerging from the colonial past.
...
In such a context, nuclear cooperation with India is appropriate. But it needs to make explicit an Indian commitment not to spread nuclear materials to other countries, such as America itself has undertaken.

The scope of the nuclear cooperation should avoid the rhetoric and the reality of a nuclear arms race in which China could be tempted to support nuclear programs in Iran and Pakistan as a counterweight.

The goal should be an Asia that navigates between an unacceptable hegemony by any power and an arms race that replicates the tragedies of Europe, only with fiercer weapons and even vaster consequences.

In a period preoccupied with concerns over terrorism and the potential clash of civilizations, the emerging cooperation between the two great democracies, India and the United States, introduces a positive and hopeful perspective.

Yes; the beginning of a wonderful relationship.

Sid forwarded on a great historical document. Its author, CDR Carl Carlson (I know that dude, natch), he is not this Carl Carlson back in JUL 02 that is a solid POSTEX from a working group. If you want to know how we got to were we are with LCS, this is a nice dot to help you connect the trendline. As these things go, it is written in a respectful, careful tone - but if you read it right you see that CDR Carlson brings up all the concerns we are dealing with today.

Reading this, I feel less insane .... but still hot around the neck about this. You know the phrase, "A camel is a horse designed by commitee."? Well, LCS is a Corvette designed by commitee. The document is full of great quotes, but I am just going to pull some out of the middle. You can find the rest..

It may be a political reality that the ship has to achieve 50 knots, but for our working groups it was certainly not a highly valued operational requirement. (pp. 32)

...many believed that the promise of network centric warfare would not be realized if the LCS fell short of full joint tactical connectivity. Although integration workshop participants had great difficulty defining exactly what particular levels of connectivity really meant,... (pp 33)

The fact remains, however, that many of the war fighting systems (e.g., ASW and MCM off-board systems and sensor grids) this variant is supposed to carry into the littoral don’t currently exist. (pp 37)

An honest bit of work. Why do I say that? Look early on in the document (pp 4).

Question 1. Is the littoral combat ship a mission/capabilities focused frigate or corvettesized ship optimized for littoral environments?

The simple answer to this question is yes. The task force was formed to help the Navy design a ship. The question is why? The Chief of Naval operations has established the goal of a 375-ship fleet — approximately 100 more than current ship plans support. Without a small, affordable ship that 375 figure is unreachable. As we understood the tasking, the CNO does not want 375 ships that are so small they are incapable of contributing to the Navy’s forward presence mission, nor so lacking in capability that they must be kept from harm’s way. The bottom line is that the littoral combat ship must help the Navy increase its force structure and be capable of satisfying some forward presence requirements.

Note that we are now down to ~315 and LCS is well over $300 million a copy.

Question 3. Is the littoral combat ship an answer looking for a question?

Since the littoral combat ship was being discussed before a mission for it was determined, some would answer this question in the affirmative. LCS may be a way to scratch the itch of military reformers in order to silence critics who insist the Navy has failed to develop a transformational road map, but that begs the question of why the Navy must transform. Surely the expeditionary nature of the naval service shouldn’t change; after all, the Army and Air Force are being lauded for becoming more expeditionary. On the other hand, real operational shortfalls associated with littoral warfare exist in the current force, and one compelling alternative to deal with those gaps is to explore the potential of a new ship designed for littoral conditions.

In the end, it looks like some of this was incorporated, but chicken or egg. Like C2 says,

We recognize that LCS is a fast moving train and that some decisions may already have been made on some of the issues considered in this report. However, given the high stakes involved for those who will serve on LCS ships and for the Navy’s effectiveness in future conflicts, we hope the careful analysis of the broad and diverse expertise of the study participants who informed these findings and recommendations will receive dueconsideration in deciding the future direction of LCS development.

Thanks Sid.

Labels: LCS

For those who have not been following the story, I have a small part (CSRT #44)in the BlogSwarm research project over at Captain's Quarters,(started here), replicating a study of over 5,000 pages of documents from Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) and Administrative Review Board (ARB) Documents Released March 3, 2006 by a group of Seton Hall law students. Below is a adusted cut from the email I sent with my completed study. Also along the text, you will see a few graphs from my data. Watch CQ as the data flows in. If you want, read the same stuff I did, and ask questions if you want.

---

As an entering argument, I used Capt. Ed's guidance to look for, "..interesting tidbits that either support oppose the detention of the detainees involved.” and “Does the government have cause to hold the prisoners based on the information inside these files” to mean if we should hold these anymore. I am assuming that given the situation in last 2001 early 2002 that these were kept with a “better safe than sorry” point of view.

One note, any “No” that I have should have a big astrisk next to it. We don’t know what is in the classified evidence. We have to assume, and I know some folks on the Tribunals – they are good folks, that if we are keeping someone that otherwise is innocent, it is because of what is in the classified information.

To better tell this story after reading through the 20 cases, I added a few graphs to include “Nationality” and “Captured.” The Nationality is self explanatory (Arab is for the two who are Arab, but the nationality is uncertain).

There are some very interesting stories. Two serious, two funny.

Serious:
- 579: Former Taliban Governor of Herat. Did interviews for VOA and BBC. Originally we should have kept him, but now? No. No one saw him pull a trigger. We have another Taliban diplomat….at Yale afterall.
- 535: Egyptian national and former member of Bosnian Army and resident of Bosnia. Fluent English. Taught weapons and explosives as a “contractor.” BS in Geology. Friendy, cooperative. We should keep him forever, unless he becomes a Jesuit.

Funny:
- 252: He wants refugee status and be allowed to emigrate to the US.
- 496: "Brokeback Hindu-Kush?" "Midnight Taliban?" "My Own Private Kandahar?" Don't know. Claims to have worked for Taliban Intel as a cook (again)...but the story is much better. A few quotes,

"I was a pretty boy." "...they told me I didn't have enough of a beard and that I was a pretty boy." "I asked them what kind of friendship or cooperation did they want? They wanted me to take care of their friends and prepare food and cleanup. I told them I would do this instead of going to court (he owed money). I was young and they were looking for boys like me an paid good money." "When my boss saw my brother and nephew, my boss asked me who they were and why are they here? I am telling you this very hesitantly and this is something that has to be kept a secret because this is a shame in the Afghan culture to disclose this type of information. There were no other motives or anything else going on besides what I am telling you." "There were rumors between the workers that I was the new boss' lover." "I can't exactly tell you what they wanted, but you should have been able to figure it out by now. I know they had a reason to treat me so well."

Recurring themes:
- Roughly 10% mention their involvement with drugs.
- Many more did not have passports or other documentation with them. We really don’t know who they are – and some claim to be misidentified.

The inability to see the classified information makes me wary to believe many of the stories. To paraphrase a quote from Full Metal Jacket,

“Those who admit it, are Taliban or Al Qaeda. Those who deny it, are well trained Taliban or Al Qaeda."

In some of the interviews (#572 specifically), some Tribunal members showed a complete lack of clue about the gun culture of Southwest Asia. In that part of the world, going around with an AK-47 is not only normal, it is essential. You would think that military personnel who come from a country where the Common Law right to defend yourself is enshrined in their Constitution would understand that. Afghanistan makes the Wild West of the 1870s look like a Cotillion.


It would seem that the Afghanistan nationals, especially those captured by the Northern Alliance or Afghan Forces and were simply trigger pullers, should be repatriated or turned over to the national authorities. After all, we have a Taliban diplomat at Yale (again).

This war is generational. If we are going to hold these people, we need to make sure we only keep the true terrorists. If we hold them, they will be with us until they die.

Not saying it will happen the same way (I will bet a PalmPilot’s next PerDiem check it doesn’t), but there are many that are using the template of the 72-75 engineered collapse of South Vietnam, in spite of the millions killed as a result, in order to regain domestic power. We saw it in 2004; and they are trying harder now for the ’06 elections.

There are three legs to this template for Leftist victory; Retreat, Scandal, Defeat. All three must happen, and paradoxically, all three must happen or none will happen. As happened in the early ‘70s, scandal weakened the Republicans to the point he could not resist congressionally mandated abandonment of the South Vietnamese.

As a result, unlike the defeat of the North Vietnamese in their ’72 Offensive, the South could not stop the ’75 offensive. With the fall of the South (Defeat), it turned Vietnamization-and-Withdrawl of earlier in the decade into a (Retreat), and of course all was done in the catalyst of Watergate (Scandal). We all know what happened ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087553/ )after that.

As we have seen in the last couple of years, using war and scandal, many on the Left have spent hours behind locked doors biting their lips with squinted eyes, flushed with the fantasy of reliving the glorious Vietnam death rattle they themselves engineered. We saw it with the death gibbeting, draft, quagmire babble, and march madness over the last few years.

Not quite getting that in gear, the scandal cooking (Sen. Feingold is just the latest iteration) continues. Almost comical, the White House Press Corps has been reduced to trying to make Watergate out of hunting accidents and shopping scams at Target.

This war is being won on the battlefield on both the tactical an operational level – on an order of magnitude greater than Vietnam (that we also won on the tactical and operational level) – the danger then as now is the political and strategic level.

So far, the Left is stuck with wasted time and tissue boxes, but they are not going to stop. Even if you found a statue of G.W. Bush in the middle of Baghdad, they would still be trying. There is great danger out there over the next year as the ’06 election cycle runs up. Watch the Weak Sisters of the Republican Party. Only through them can the wheels come off the wagon.

Many will happily sacrifice victory, national security, and the lives of millions of moderate Muslims for personal political satisfaction. Their hunger, combined with the useful idiots’ dreams, and misty-eyed fools’ misconceptions of the world are more than just a distraction to the road to victory – they are starting to look like a 5th Column; confusing victory for the Nation and the West with a victory for their hated enemy, Bush.

Today, we have Withdrawal from Iraq (Retreat), any Scandal-ju-jour-that-will-stick (Scandal), and Civil War (Defeat). Never would think a war was on.....

Labels: Democrats, Media

This time at The People's Cube.

Pay them a visit and read the whole thing. Sigh.

In the parallel universe much of the MSM and those who rely on them live in; this must make their puzzler sore. Out here in America though, it makes sense.

The Army National Guard, which has suffered a severe three-year recruiting slump, has begun to reel in soldiers in record numbers, aided in part by a new initiative that pays Guard members $2,000 for each person they enlist.

The Army Guard said Friday that it signed up more than 26,000 soldiers in the first five months of fiscal 2006, exceeding its target by 7 percent in its best performance in 13 years. At this pace, Guard leaders say they are confident they will reach their goal of boosting manpower from the current 336,000 to the congressionally authorized level of 350,000 by the end of the year.

"Will we make 350,000? The answer is: Absolutely," said Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau.

They must of hid the truth......right?

A driving force in this year's early success, Guard leaders say, is that thousands of Guard members have now returned from Iraq and are reaching out to friends, old classmates and co-workers -- widening the face-to-face contacts that officials say are critical to recruiting. Guard members "are staying with us and want to fill up units with their neighbors and friends," Blum said in an interview. "Now that they're back -- watch out."

Hat tip SayAnything via PolitburoDiktat.

Why, he joins the Marine Corps, of course.

After Pat was killed, he (her son Jeremy Staat) began to dwell on things. He visited me at home and we had a real serious talk. He told me that he was through with football.”

He decided to enlist in the military. Because of his larger-than-life exterior, Staat had to pass a few tests before he could enlist.

His mother said he passed tests everyday.

“He called me and said, ‘Mom, you can’t be any more than 78 inches, 29 years old and 261 pounds,’’’ said Goodheart. “He was all three.”

This guy must have been a hoot for the Drill Instructors,

Stepping away from the life of an entertainer to enjoy the priceless experience of Marine Corps boot camp, Staat said he couldn’t feel more at home.

“I would wake up every day and smile,” said Staat. “Recruits look at me like I am crazy, but I am just happy to be here; to be on a practice field as big as Camp Pendleton is crazy.”

According to Goodheart, the letters Staat sent home during training let her know that her son was doing fine in his training. “He was very happy,” she said.

The only thing that Staat couldn’t grasp about training was the other recruits. He couldn’t understand why 60 recruits would rather to do push-ups in the dirt than sound off when told to by their drill instructors, but Staat never lost his motivation, according to Goodheart.
...
Staat said he found it amusing that people pay for the training that Marines are paid to complete.

“They train you to keep in shape. They put you on a diet,” said Staat. “People pay to do that.”

Staat recalled a day during training when his company ran the obstacle course. There are a number of high walls, logs and bars to get over throughout the course including the rope, which is strung from a high beam of wood to the ground. Staat attempted to climb the rope but failed. He was trained on the proper techniques, he got a second chance.

Staat’s senior drill instructor told him to climb the rope again. One of the many things that are stressed during training is bearing, but when Staat climbed to the top of the rope, he broke his bearing and smiled.

“I asked him what happened the first time and he smiled and said, ‘This recruit didn’t have the technique down, sir,’” said Staff Sgt. Miguel R. Saenz, senior drill instructor, Platoon 1065.

“I was just happy,” said Staat. “I had never climbed a rope before.”

Attitude. Kind of reminds me of this guy some...in a good way.

I've had issues with Senator McCain in the past - that is OK, no one is perfect - but he is in the 10-ring on this.

"You'll never see a 313-ship Navy if these costs prevail," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., citing projections of $13 billion aircraft carriers and multibillion-dollar destroyers. "These are staggering numbers. In the past 10 to 15 years, the cost escalation has been astronomical."

Navy Secretary Donald Winter said the Navy needs to do a better job of limiting the design requirements of new ships.

Bingo! LCS is a perfect example. Speed fetish folks drove the engineering costs through the roof - but the real problem is the whole "module" concept and the requirement to move technology from PowerPoint to underway in 3-D. Just look at the program requirements (page 5 here).

"I recognize that if it keeps going like it's going, we'll never get there," agreed Adm. Michael Mullen, the chief of naval operations.

Mullen said the Navy would need to spend about $13.5 billion a year on shipbuilding to support the new construction plan and increase the size of the fleet. The 2007 defense budget, submitted to Congress last month, calls for spending $10.5 billion.

When your costs go up 40-80%, you are in a death spiral of production.

"Our fleet is at the smallest size it's been since before World War I," Lieberman said. "We need to spend more at a very dangerous time in our nation's history."

Spend more or spend smart? You think all that money is going to be there, or hope?

The new shipbuilding plan would increase Navy procurement dramatically, growing from the purchase of seven new ships next year to 14 ships in 2011. But the plan also calls for cuts in the large, costly ships that sustain major shipyards like Newport News.

Outyear projections never happen. Without money that won’t come, how do you buy what you need. If you want 55 LCS and your price per shadow goes up 40%, you wind up with 22. How many K130 Corvettes or ANZAC Frigates can you buy with that - and capabilities that come with them? Not perfect ships, but I will take them and their proven, advanced systems over promises and pipe dreams.

While I continue to kick LCS in the ass – I want you to look at this site from PEO Ships at Crane. Half way down the page where it states, “LCS will be a "small, fast, affordable ship: Speed and agility.” Small-No. Fast-Yes. Affordable-No. .300 is great in baseball, not shipbuilding (notice the lack of “break things and kill people” on the page).

BTW, the CNO has been on this problem he inherited. I think he knows the challenge, but to fix it is an undertaking that will take Senators such as McCain and Lieberman to get out and push ... and give him the top-cover to put heads on pikes. He knows how to do it.

My last installment of the LCS Chronicles made Chap’s head hurt. Good post at his site. Check it out.

Labels: LCS, Shipbuilding

Somewhere, SWOs everywhere are are being picked up off the deck at sea and at home - and when they recover are trying to write checks to Rep. Weldon.

Yes. That Sestak. I am not making this up. It is real. Shocker, he is running as a Dem.

Mr. Arkin isn't impressed.

Joe Sestak's argument with the Iraq war is standard John Kerry fare: The Iraq war was not wrong per se, it was just undertaken at "the wrong time," according to Sestak's campaign website. The United States should have finished the job in Afghanistan -- "win the peace" -- and then turned its attention to Iraq.

And that's not all. If the United States had finished its objective in Afghanistan first, Sestak says, "we could have later brought, if needed, an undivided U.S. force to Iraq within a large Arab-led regional coalition."

Huh? At what point in time does Sestak think that the United States could have cobbled together a "large Arab-led regional coalition" to undertake preemptive war against Iraq?

Sestak points to Desert Storm, an international response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, or Kosovo, the "humanitarian" intervention years in the making and limited to coercive air strikes, as potential models for a successful second Iraq war.

(Sestak, it should be pointed out, worked on the National Security Council staff from 1994-1997 in the Clinton administration, toiling on the former Yugoslavia; which I guess partially makes it his war.)

So, let me get this right -- Sestak says Saddam was not a threat and yet he argues that we should have gone to war against him with some kind of Arab-led coalition anyway?

Sestak, in other words, is just another Washington technocrat who believes nothing. And as a career military man who ultimately believes in military solutions, he can't and wouldn't say we should never have attacked Saddam Hussein in the first place.

Sestak says that "our military is a national treasure that should not be used recklessly" but what he really means to say is that it should only be used recklessly by him.

Yes, the CNO would love to say, "Yes sir, Congressman Sestak."

Labels: Sestak

More news.

"Any girl at our school who turns in a guy is gonna be crucified," Midshipman Elizabeth Burnett said..

Read that comment again. "Girl...Guy..." The academy that is supposed to be making warfighters an leaders for the Navy of the world’s only superpower. Are they focused on their core competency (a little B-school lingo for you 6-sigma types)?

Burnett's testimony highlighted a nagging problem at the academy, ... it has been hit by recurring sexual assault and harassment scandals in recent years.

Would that be partially because you have them watching training that tells them that just because she doesn’t say no or stop doesn’t mean you can move from one base to another (I guess they are building a checklist or something – “BOLD FACED ITEMS COMPLETE”)?

Burnett said the pressure not to report sexual assaults comes not only from male midshipmen but also from women, who make up about 17 percent of the 4,200-member student body.

"They'll say this is why the guys here won't date us," Burnett said,

Read that again and ask yourself the question; is Annapolis focused on producing leaders and warfighters – or are they being made once the get to the Fleet? Are you happy that a MIDN who is 18 months away from being a commissioned officer finds it a problem that she might have a problem finding someone to be her boyfriend in Bancroft Hall. What WILL she do for prom?

"People are starting to find out it's her," Burnett said. "And some people are not really standing by her."

Is this a requirement? Where did she get this idea? What if it is Sober Buyer’s Remorse? Just because someone thinks something, does not require everyone to blindly agree with them; especially if they have information that leads them to think otherwise. If one day I tell everyone that the Lady of the Lake handed me a sword and declared me King – that does not require everyone to call me Your Majesty; though I recommend it.

Burnett testified yesterday that she and another midshipman, Megan Boyd, met with Owens at his invitation Jan. 29. She said Owens seemed remorseful and told them that he had been drinking in Baltimore that night with other members of the football team. They asked him what happened, Burnett said.

"I don't really remember all of it because I was drunk and so was she, and we just started talking and things escalated," Burnett recalled him saying. Burnett said she told him that the woman didn't see it that way.

"What? Is she calling it rape?" Burnett recalled him saying. Burnett and Boyd each testified that Owens told them, "If someone did this to my sister, I'd want to kill them."

Under cross-examination, Wrobel asked whether Owens might have been remorseful at the thought of having consensual sex in a dorm room, a violation of the honor code punishable by expulsion.

"That's fair," Burnett responded.

So, we have more “I wish I was JAG….” personal investigations going on? Also, in spite of MIDN Burnett’s pre-Art. 32 bias towards thinking MIDN Owens was resourceful might be about rape, that you now admit it might be because of the “….”

Her testimony, more than anything else, leads me to the thought that if MIDN Owens is a rapist, then most of the men I went to school with were rapists, and most of the women I know has been raped. If everything is rape; rape doesn’t exist. That is the tragedy of this.

I will now take a deep breath with hope that my Navy will in the end do the right thing and clear MIDN Owens’s name of the rape charge. As for the new problems he has as mentioned in the article; let me define pr0n and then give me full access to the computers and server records of every USNA officer and those in D.C. There aren’t enough JAGs in the Navy to handle the case load. Click the wrong google link or reference from a MSM source....and you're there You don't think so, go to this link from the WaPo article quoted in this article. Don't believe me - check the Technoroti page. A little N6 and NMCI knowledge is a dangerous thing….

It is hard to say it any better than General Abizaid on the Dubai Ports BS.

"I am very dismayed by the emotional responses that some people have put on the table here in the United States that really comes down to Arab and Muslim bashing that was totally unnecessary," Abizaid, who just returned from Iraq for meetings in Washington, told reporters.

MeggaDittos

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UPDATE: Eagle1 has a very good overview.

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Ungh. Just ungh. Not only is it a Little Crappy Ship, it is an expensive Little Crappy Ship. Thought LPD-17 was a single point..

Behold.

The cost of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships will jump as much as 44 percent, a revelation that casts new doubts on the service’s ability to estimate its shipbuilding expenses.

The ships were to have cost about $220 million apiece, but Navy figures released Feb. 27 show the price tag rising to $316 million in 2008, leading to an average of $307 million for each of the planned 55 ships in the class.

What are you buying for $316 million a hull?

1xMH-60, 57mm, and RAM for AAW.

They are still working on ASUW and ASW. Still PPT programs. Seriously, it is very hard to get solid answers on the ASUW and ASW part. Remember when this started as Streetfighter?

As of mid-2001 the Office of Naval Research was considering construction of a Littoral Combat Ship with a displacement of 500 to 600 tons. The LCS would have a draft of about three meters, an operational range of 4,000 nautical miles, and a maximum speed of 50-60 knots. The cost per ship might be at least $90 million.

Want to see what the Danes are getting for about 60% or less of the cost?

1 ea 127 mm Gun Mk M/02 LvSa (5” Mk 45 Mod 4)
8 ea Harpoon SSM (2x4)
2 ea Sea Sparrow SAM VLS Mk. 48 Launcher (1x6)
7 ea 12.7 mm Heavy Machine Gun M/01 LvSa

2 ea 35 mm CIWS Mk M/0? LvSa
4 ea Stinger Lv M/93 (2x2)
SEAGNAT/SBROC Mk. 36
MU90 323 mm Anti submarine torpedoes
Mines

Additional space for:

2 ea Landing Crafts of the LCP Class
2 ea Agusta-Westland EH-101 Helicopters

Before all the "Yea, but the speed of the LCS....the shallow draft!" Read this.

A 2003 analysis by David D. Rudko noted that the Navy has stated the Littoral Combat Ship must incorporate endurance, speed, payload capacity, sea-keeping, shallow-draft and mission reconfigurability into a small ship design. However, constraints in current ship design technology make this desired combination of design characteristics in small ships difficult to realize at any cost. Speed, displacement, and significant wave height all result in considerable increases in fuel consumption, and as a result, severely limit Littoral Combat Ship endurance. When operating in a significant wave height of six feet, regardless of the amount of fuel carried, the maximum endurance achieved for a wave-piercing catamaran Littoral Combat Ship outfitted with all modular mission packages is less than seven days. Especially noteworthy is that when restricted to a fuel reserve of 50% and a fuel carrying capacity of Day tanks, the maximum achieved endurance is only 4.8 hours when operating at a maximum speed of 48 knots. The Littoral Combat Ship can achieve high speeds; however, this can only be accomplished at the expense of range and payload capacity. The requirement for the Littoral Combat Ship to go fast (forty-eight knots) requires a seaframe with heavy propulsion systems. The weight of the seaframe, required shipboard systems (weapons, sensors, command and control, and self-defense) and modular mission packages accounts for 84% of the full displacement, and as a result, substantially limits total fuel carrying capacity. Since initial mission profiles required the high-speed capability at most five percent of the time, the end result is a Littoral Combat Ship that has very little endurance and a high-speed capability it will rarely use. Refueling, and potentially rearming, will require the Littoral Combat Ship to leave littoral waters and transit to Combat Logistics Force ships operating outside the littorals for replenishment. Given the low endurance of the Littoral Combat Ship, its time on station is seriously compromised.

According to the DOT&E, the accelerated acquisition timeline for LCS leaves very little time to apply any lessons learned from the construction/operational testing of Flight 0 ships to Flight 1 hull and mission package designs. The two Flight 0 hulls will likely be different designs and their construction schedules will overlap. Hull #1 will be delivered approximately nine months prior to hull #2. The final design of hull #3, the first Flight 1 ship, will start a few months after delivery of hull #1 and prior to the delivery of hull #2.

While I try to stop going to the wet bar - will someone tell me how we are going to build a fleet with the above plus,

... the Navy’s $3.3 billion cost estimate for its new DD(X) destroyer was called unrealistic; the experts forecast the destroyers would eventually cost more than $4 billion apiece.

But LCS, at the lower end of the cost scale, “is intended to be the poster child for cost-control,” according to one congressional naval expert.

Call it what you want, but if it cost $3-4 billion - it isn't a DD.

“That’s not a good sign for the DD(X)/CG(X) program,” said the congressional source, referring to the planned CG(X) cruiser that will follow the DD(X) destroyer design.

“In terms of estimating costs, there’s less there to estimate with LCS,” he said. “It’s a simpler ship. How did they get that so wrong already?”

You don't say! Has anyone been fired yet? Oh, nevermind. I'm going to see how to get in the wet bar.

Hat tip reader KK.

Labels: LCS, Shipbuilding

I would have preferred a fatwa....but this will do.

While you have every right to express your views as a blogger, be careful not to open yourself to a libel law suit by publishing and spreading wrong and defaming facts about a person you identify by name. When in doubt or uncertain about the authenticity of a fact, it is better to err on the side of caution and not unintentionally spread incorrect information. Legal fees can get pretty expensive. Better not to take the chance.

No details and specific items to counter that information in the post (not really important to link to the post in question - who knows they might be right - if so I will take down the post) that are defaming (their definition, not mine); so the post stands. You know me, I will be the first to correct myself if I am shown that something that I link to, or say myself, is incorrect. No partial credit for "he said, she said."

I knew I was in trouble when the email started this way;

I am a Christian. My faith is centered in Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. It is in the context of this relationship that I pray. Every prayer I offer to my Lord, whether publicly or privately, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. I cannot do otherwise.

Hint on the subject post.

Some Brother or Sister (no name on the email) needs to review 1 Corinthians 6:1-8. I'm going to go have a good cry now.

Art Buchwald is going out in style.

I am writing this article from a hospice. But being in the hospice didn't work out exactly the way I wanted it to. By all rights I should have finished my time here five or six weeks ago -- at least that's all Medicare would pay for.
...
I don't know if this is true or not, but I think some people, not many, are starting to wonder why I'm still around. In fact, a few are sending me get-well cards. These are the hard ones to answer.

So far things are going my way. I am known in the hospice as The Man Who Wouldn't Die. How long they allow me to stay here is another problem. I don't know where I'd go now, or if people would still want to see me if I weren't in a hospice. But in case you're wondering, I'm having a swell time -- the best time of my life.

AB comes from a gentler time in leftist political humor where things were less flecked and vicious. I will admit, I read his work – even received While Reagan Slept as a gift once in the 80s. There is a nice interview with him here.

While we are still with us Art; congrats on a life well lived, and may your transition be peaceful.

Going back to the Midshipman Owens story for a bit. The Art. 32 was conducted yesterday. Fair write-up in the WaPo. Read it all; but this is the standard we are accepting to destroy a man?

She said that neither of them said anything and that she did not tell him to stop or call out to her roommate, who was sleeping in the next bunk, for help.

"Why didn't you?" asked the prosecutor, Cmdr. David Wilson.

"I don't know," she said, adding that she did not consent.

The woman said she knew Owens casually and had seen him in the halls. He had once sent her a text message after spotting her at a bar, saying she "looked good," she testified.

The woman acknowledged that her memory of some of that evening was spotty.

"Isn't it possible that during these blackout periods that you don't recall that you could have had an instant message conversation with Midshipman Owens that led to some consensual activity?" Wroble asked.

"I suppose so," the woman said.

"So what you've admitted is you may very well have consented? During these periods you blacked out?" Wroble said.

"I wouldn't define it as consent if I don't remember it happening," she said. "I don't think I would have consented, because I was drunk."

Fairly scary stuff. “I don’t remember.” Sober buyer’s remorse or rape? We don’t know. That is the key. We never will. The court may have a reasonable doubt on the rape; but a career and personal honor is destroyed one way or another. With an evidence flow like this – there is a lot here for military and civilians alike. To start with, we need to teach Logic at Annapolis.

I think everyone should back off MIDN Owens. If that is rape; well - I'm not calling it rape. Even if you accept 100% of the female MIDN's story - it isn't even sexual assault. Violation of some USNA regulations? Sure. Maybe some other UCMJ issues; perhaps. Rape? If so, rape has been defined down to the point we can no longer define it.

In the end, like I counsel all my officers and enlisted – don’t sleep with the help – and if you find yourself drinking with Sailors of the opposite sex – drink somewhere else. Especially if your BAC is the same as hers, I don’t care what she just whispered in your ear, or where her hand is. Grab a few male Shipmates and go somewhere else. An ounce of prevention…..

Please, don't let anyone interview her again. There is a lot to shake your head about, read it here and figure it out yourself. I am uninspired, unimpressed; and I am thinking about a couple of friends, great warfighters and professionals, who did not make CAPT, have an impressive CV and would give an interview that would make you want to go PT. I will leave you with one quote to make sure you read it all.

"The one Christmas I was away from home was when I was stationed in Guam," she said. "I spent half the day crying."

No ma'am; after reading this article, I need a good cry.

Hat tip reader Larry.

Nice bit of work by Mohamad Bazzi.

When insurgents in Iraq use IEDs to attack armored vehicles and disrupt U.S. supply lines, they are taking a page from the less-advanced tactics of T.E. Lawrence, the British adventurer who pioneered guerrilla warfare during the 1916-18 Arab revolt against Turkish rule. His main lesson for insurgents: If you're facing a bigger and better-armed adversary, don't engage him directly.

His work has a successful track record.

Lawrence's book has inspired many modern insurgent leaders. Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who fought the French colonization of Vietnam in the 1950s, once told a French adversary: "My fighting gospel is T.E. Lawrence's 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.' I am never without it."

..but lucky for us...

While Iraqi insurgents are applying the military tactics developed by Lawrence, they are ignoring his political lessons. They have disregarded the principles - of Lawrence and others - that guided most rebellions of the 20th century: Try to win broad public support; create a political wing; present an alternative system of governing, and build international legitimacy. This insurgency also has no charismatic leader, no clear chain of command and not even a cohesive ideology.

No, this has nothing to do with BRAC.

The Navy Historical Center does not get enough play. One of the great things about the NHC is its collection of primary sources. Much as been written about the CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor and the actions that came before their engagement, but none are as good as the primary sources.

Being a Southerner, I will focus on the reports from my countrymen. If you ever wonder your connection to those that served before, read all, but focus on Admiral Buchanan. I have worked directly for my fair share of Flag Officers, and he reads like the best.

The horror. The horror.



Hat tip Skippy-san.

Like the UN, NATO's European members will dither until the "facts on the ground" will have changed such at "Black Africa" Darfur will be like "Polish Jewry."

NATO officials say political sensitivities will probably mean that the alliance's role will - for the time being at least - prevent the dispatch of large numbers of European or North American troops.

They point out that any NATO deployment would need a United Nations request, with backing from Russia, China and the African Union - which has stressed a preference for an African solution to the conflict.

"NATO has not received any formal request from the U.N. or from the African Union for anything beyond what it is currently doing," said NATO spokesman James Appathurai. "NATO is continuing to do what it has been doing for many months, and that is airlifting in and out African Union battalions ... as well as providing training."

Let's face it: the African Union member states cannot even help themselves - not to mention Darfur wit the ROE they have.

Although a high-powered Western force could be more effective militarily, many fear the political fallout - particularly if the mainly Muslim Sudanese government opposes a NATO deployment.

"If we do it through NATO we'll give further encouragement to all those who are condemning the white man and are fueling the clash of civilizations," said Dominique Moisi, deputy director of the French Institute of International Relations. "They will use it against us."

With that top-level guidance, I'll say it now. Sudan has an open season in Darfur. In six months, it won matter any more.

"Let us make sure we do not spread ourselves too much in areas where the competence of other organizations is more obvious," she told a security conference in Germany.

Would they say that if it was happening in Europe?

The United States and several other nations have said genocide has occurred in Darfur. The Arab-dominated government in Khartoum has been accused of backing the Janjaweed militia against civilians in an area where black African rebels revolted in 2003. An estimated 2 million have been forced from their homes.

Well, perhaps you can't save the world. The USA isn't going in their solo. If that is the UN/NATO perspective in what is geographically Europe's South America; then stop saying "Never Again." Never Again already is.

On a side note, if you have TimesSelect, Nicholas Kristof has a great bit up on Darfur. If not, CoalitionForDarfur has copied it all.

For more than two years, the world has pretty much ignored the genocide unfolding in the Darfur region of Sudan, just as it turned away from the slaughter of Armenians, Jews, Cambodians and Rwandans in earlier decades.

And now, apparently encouraged by the world's acquiescence, Sudan is sending its proxy forces to invade neighboring Chad and kill and rape members of the same African tribes that have already been ethnically cleansed in Darfur itself.

Required reading.

Strong. I wish the MSM in the USA were this clear.

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

You will be in good company.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Chahla Chafiq, Caroline Fourest, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Irshad Manji, Mehdi Mozaffari, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, Antoine Sfeir, Philippe Val, Ibn Warraq

Other bloggers on the bus; LGF, Rusty, and PBSWatch.

What is in the water at Annapolis? From the not-anti-USNA paper, The Capital is another example, if accurate (two sources tell me it is,) of the rot that needs to be excised from Severn School for Wayward Youth.

The mid, a member of the school's crew team, was dismissed from the school for having consensual sex with a classmate during a training exercise in July.

The midshipman said he had sex with her, and three other female midshipmen who were witnesses in the case, engaged in identical or similar sexual misconduct but were not punished, the midshipman said.

OK, I was going to be serious in this post. But I can't help myself. Questions: (1) If the three other female MIDN were witnesses to the case - the male MIDN slept with them as well - did all this take place at the same time? (2) Did he do an act with one of the four (ah, to be young again) that is worthy of being expelled, but was doing/did acts with the other three that does not? (3) Is there a diagram?

Instead, they were counseled about avoiding situations that led to sexual harassment and misconduct, he said.

Like being a Skank?

"In an effort to make things equal or better for women, the academy has decided to let what females do go untouched," the male midshipman said in an interview with The Capital. He asked that his name not be used in the article.

Ummmmmm...sounds like they were touched plenty - and did some touching too.

The midshipman described the relationship between him and his classmate as a "kind of a summer fling" that lasted "a week and a half."

"They (the academy) decided to press it under sexual misconduct," he said.

Man, Plebe Summer has changed.

When asked, Cmdr. Gibbons said data was not available to show how many midshipmen, either cumulatively or by gender, had been discharged in the past two years for sexual harassment, assault and misconduct.

Not available to you, maybe.

The case of the male midshipman who alleges inequity of punishment started in July when he was an 18-year-old freshman.

Plebe Summer has REALLY CHANGED!

He admitted to Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigators that he had consensual sex with a female classmate over a period of about 10 days while on a training exercise in Norfolk, Va., according to documents in the case.

All sex acts took place in a hotel room or in a car at the Norfolk Navy Yard, according to case documents.

Along with about half the Navy methinks. Oh, the MA stories you should hear...

"The NCIS report I saw said there was no point at which she (the female mid) was a victim. But the academy picked it up from there ... They decided to press it under sexual misconduct."

For him only, it seems. Only misconduct for pitching, not catching.

While one female midshipman allegedly had sex with the male midshipman in this case, two others, who became witnesses in the case, allegedly engaged in sexual acts in a hotel room with NROTC midshipmen who were there training with the crew of the USS Leyte Gulf, the midshipman wrote in one memo.

Well, at least they aren't snobs. Score two for the NROTC guys!

A fourth woman mid who was a witness allegedly spent the night with a commissioned officer, according to the memo, an act which would have violated the military rule against fraternization.

Reminds me of the time in Spain when I was brought out of my sleep by one of the male MIDN doing "PQS" at about 0200 with one of our female LTJG.

"On the night of 09 July 2005, (female) MIDN 2 not only engaged in sexual intercourse (on the floor of a hotel room), but did so fully aware that currently present in the room were 4 other MIDN who were awake at the time," the midshipman wrote.

"(Female) MIDN 3 bragged about her previous sexual experiences with another MIDN at the academy. She ... bragged about how she had a Dole (banana) sticker in her cover (hat) for the numerous times she had had sexual intercourse on the yard."

This female allegedly boasted about "having had sexual intercourse in the different classrooms in Luce Hall."

Just read that again. Nothing new, just funny to see it in a newspaper. On the solo front, you really don't want to know about "marking territory" at Annapolis. You don't. Really.

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Now for the serious stuff. This happens every weekend at every CO-ED school in the Western world. Actually, the MIDN above are rank amateurs compared to the folks I went to school with. But, the USNA has different rules, so if you go there, follow them. If you run the place, you need to treat everyone the same.

Is this the example we want to set for the Fleet? If you are a Dawg, you get dismissed. If you are a Skank you are told to not sleep with the help and take it off campus? Talk about a paternalistic double-standard.

I would like more detail, but the report from the paper is in-line with what I have heard over the last few years from my JOs from Boat School, male and female, over a few beers.

More goodies over at TCF.

Hat tip RGT.

Want to see the reason I had an issue with the former CNO?

The highest-ranking officer in the U.S. Air Force pushed a $49 million publicity project for the Thunderbirds air show that is now being investigated by federal regulators.

Documents obtained by The Arizona Republic show that Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and other high-ranking officials were involved in steering the contract toward a Pennsylvania company whose senior partners included a recently retired four-star Air Force general.

Hang 'em high and pass a law NOW to stop this. All the 99% of honorable retired Flags are smeared by this FOD. Those who know, know this is not an isolated problem. 5-year minimum cooling off period. Retired 4-stars are not poor.

The protest pointed to Gen. Hal Hornburg, who oversaw the Thunderbirds as commander of the Air Combat Command and joined SMS only months after his retirement from the Air Force last January.

Stinky. Stinky. Stinky.

Labels: Food Trough

Well, at least at OSU.

A student’s column in the Oregon State University campus newspaper has prompted protests by Muslim students, who say it is offensive to their faith.
...
(as a result, for future issues) editors have been checking copy with Muslim students, and on Tuesday deleted one paragraph from a piece scheduled to be published the next day.

Nice Dhimmi. I guess the invite to the Baptist Student Union or Biet Am is in the mail. Right?

Hat tip LGF.

On the right, by Democrats.

Gov. Janet Napolitano said Wednesday she is prepared to use state money to send National Guard troops to the Arizona-Mexico border to crack down on illegal immigration if the Pentagon declines to pick up the bill.

The blinders of the Republican establishment on the illegal immigration issue will contribute to their '06 losses and may hold the key in '08. Why? By not going after the problem, they are alienating their base, and loosing the national-security fence sitters.

You can nit-pic the Gov.'s motives all you want, but the Republican's tee'd the ball up for her. Who wouldn't swing?

Give this woman 30 divisions, and remind me not to piss her off.

Courtesy of MEMRI TV.

Hat tip LGF.

You know, John over at Argghhh!!! claims to be working in some Army related job in the Midwest post retirement, but I think I have finally blown his cover! It isn't what you think. His real name is "Clive" and he has moved to the UK.

Of note, retirement has been very good to him. He looks 20 years younger! He does kind of talk funny, and I am not sure about the shirt....but he wouldn't be the only Army guy I know to go "metrosexual."

Anyway, here is a clip of his job at the UK's HSN - and he gets his friends kids jobs as well. What a guy!

Hat tip ILYS.

Labels: Guns

Raul Reyes (a NY Attny specializing in who-knows-what and member of USA Today's Board of Contributors) spews out a gaggle of insulting garbage about Hispanics in the military. (BTW Raul, if I have blond hair, blue eyes and my last name is Martinez because I grandfather came from Spain - does that make me Hispanic?) He sings his one-note tune at USA Today a few days ago (see more of his constant B-flat here, here, here, and here - yes, it gets boring).

Latinos enlist for the same reasons others do: patriotism, educational benefits, job training and a sense of purpose. Like other minorities, Latinos have often seen the military as a path toward social acceptance. Members of my own family have donned the uniform.

Yet with our country at war, Latinos are uniquely vulnerable to recruiting material. Hispanics are more likely to attend inferior public schools than other Americans are. We have high dropout and incarceration rates. According to the Pew Center, we are younger, poorer and less educated.

The military is a double-edged sword for many Latinos because it offers opportunities not available in civilian life, but it is fraught with clear risks. Worse yet, with a few notable exceptions such as Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq, Latinos occupy the lower rungs of the ladder, making up only 4.7% of the officer corps.

Uniquely vulnerable? GMAFB. I don't think David Duke could get away with saying that kind of crap. And what is it with the 4.7% comment? Recruit more or less? Make up your mind.

This is such an agenda driven bit by an ethnicity-pimp that it is not worth comment - but you know me.

I'll wait for his concern about the number of Southerners in the military. We're too ignorant to know better, you know - just cannon fodder. Waiting.

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday
that colleges that accept federal money must allow military
recruiters on campus, despite university objections to the
Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays.
Justices rejected a free-speech challenge from law school
professors who claimed they should not be forced to associate with
military recruiters or promote their campus appearances.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the decision, which was
unanimous...

About. Time. Yea. Waiting a long time.

Hat tip The Corner.

This is becoming a dangerous comedy. Does anyone really think Iran isn't building a bomb?

Iran's Revolutionary Guards have taken the extraordinary step of cutting down thousands of trees in Teheran to prevent United Nations inspectors from finding traces of enriched uranium from a top-secret nuclear plant.

A country nukes (pun intended) blogspot over the cartoons.

Bloggers in Pakistan became first became aware of the ban on 28 February when they were unable to access a popular blog hosting site, Blogspot.

One of the blocked sites is hosted on Blogspot, which led to the blocking of all web journals hosted on the site.

Here is the fun part.

Pakistan, meanwhile, is seeking an internationally applicable law against blasphemy

I'm sure the BBC is opposed to that. I'm sure....

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UPDATE: Always on top when I screw up. Reader Mike nails my blabbering to the wall. I missed an important part of the message:

A. THE PRODUCTION OF A SINGLE NAVY WORKING UNIFORM FOR WEAR BY ALL SAILORS E-1 TO O-10 -- AT SEA AND ASHORE AND ACROSS ALL COMMUNITIES. THIS BDU-STYLE UNIFORM WILL FEATURE THREE VARIANTS, ALL IN A MULTI-COLOR DIGITAL PRINT PATTERN, PREDOMINATELY BLUE, WITH SOME GRAY, FOR SHIPBOARD AND NORMAL NAVY USE, JUNGLE/WOODLAND CAMOUFLAGE, AND DESERT CAMOUFLAGE.

After hanging my head in shame - this brought up another couple of questions. (1) How do we simplify the seabag by going to three (3) sets of BDU? (2) Why is this better than the Army one (1) BDU for saving money?

Humbled, but still not happy with the decision. Navalize the Army BDU and call it even. Rummy, call your office. Orig post below.

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That is the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw the "approved" Navy BDU.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen approved plans for a single working uniform for all ranks and a year-round service uniform for E-6 and below Sailors.
...
The BDU-style working uniform, designed to replace seven different styles of current working uniforms, is made of a near maintenance-free permanent press 50/50 nylon and cotton blend. Worn with a blue cotton t-shirt, it will include an eight-point cover, a black web belt with closed buckle, and black smooth leather boots, with black suede no-shine boots for optional wear while assigned to non-shipboard commands.
Look at that heat-sink (higher res here). Everyone who has been deployed on the deck (not in the air looking down) to Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and/or Iraq during the summertime in the last 5 years raise your hands. The summer, heck spring and fall, direct sun of SW Asia should not be a shock to anyone. Throw in the deck of a CVN and think about how dark that uniform is. I am not going to even talk about the "blue theme." That BDU is going to give Sailors heat stroke and will do zip, zero, nada to anyone trying to hide in a desert environment.

I hope our Corpsmen get to wear Marine BDU. If you are Haji bringing your AK up on a group of Americans, if you even bother to aim, where are you naturally going to point....right! At the dark target against the light background. This is so wrong in so many ways. I like that they kept the hat and all, but just take the Marine or Army pattern, save some money, and get to the business of the Navy. I am sorry. I don't care about your desire to hide you paint stains (this won't do it BTW). This is the wrong answer. As we say in D.C. - I non-concur, sir.

The new service uniform is not going to make the Chief's Mess happy (another tradition down the pipe).

The service uniform for E-6 and below is comprised of a short-sleeve khaki shirt for males and an over-blouse for females, made from a wash and wear 75/25 polyester and wool blend, with permanent military creases, black trousers for males with belt less slacks for females and optional belt less skirt, and a black unisex garrison cap. Silver anodized-metal rank insignia will be worn on shirt/blouse collars and cap. The service uniform will also include a black relaxed-fit Eisenhower-style jacket with a knit stand-up collar and epaulets, on which petty officers will wear large, silver anodized-metal rank insignia. Those entitled to wear gold chevrons will continue to wear gold chevrons on the large metal rank insignia on the jacket.

I have not been happy with Task Force Uniform for awhile. It is tough for me to say, because I have worked with the MCPON when he was at C5F......he knows the heat/direct sun issue.

Not to be a nattering-naybob-of-negitivism - there is one thing I liked.

The work of TFU will not stop. Next on the agenda is to evaluate additional uniform options, such as reviving the traditional Service Dress Khaki uniform for chiefs and officers,

You wish. I mean this Service Dress Khaki, that like most great things, was done away with in the 1970s.

One snarky comment from the backbenches in the Salamander family - did you notice that 2/3 of the Navy is female?

Hat tip Lex (he gets a twofer today).

Labels: Uniforms

In his shame, former Rep. from San Diego and Vietnam Ace, Randy "Duke" Cunningham is going to jail.

Former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who collected $2.4 million in homes, yachts, antique furnishings and other bribes on a scale unparalleled in the history of Congress, was sentenced Friday to eight years and four months in prison, the longest term meted out to a congressman in decades.

Cunningham, who resigned from Congress in disgrace last year, was spared the 10-year maximum by U.S. District Judge Larry Burns but was immediately taken into custody. He also was ordered to pay $1.8 million in restitution for back taxes and forfeit $1.85 million in valuables he received.

Cunningham accepted money and gifts including a Rolls-Royce and $40,000 Persian rugs from defense contractors and others in exchange for steering government contracts their way and other favors.

Lex put it best; Obscene venality.

"Those who God will humble; he will first make great."

Go to AcePilots for the man at his best.

Friday's post is fixed....don't miss it!


PS: I'm back to broadband. Oh, like my 9yr old would say, my job is "cool." Nuff said.

No, not suicide bombers....but the cultural terrorists known as the Baby Boomers. OK, a little over the top, but Maggie Gallagher has some good news on a return to cultural sanity.

True or False: College students today are more likely to approve of casual, uncommitted sex than college students 20 years ago. False. Between 1980 and 2000, the proportion of students in the UCLA College Freshmen survey who agreed that "if two people really like each other, it's all right for them to have sex even if they have known each other for only a very short time" dropped from 48 percent to 42 percent.

True or False: Marriages are much more likely to end in divorce today than they were 20 years ago. False. The overall divorce rate peaked around 1980 and appears to have declined modestly since then. Divorce rates per 1,000 marriages were 22.6 in 1980, 20.9 in 1990, and 18.8 in 2000(latest data: 2004: 17.7). (National Marriage Project, State of Our Unions, 2005.) According to a recent study divorce rates among the college-educated have fallen the most dramatically since the 1970s, while rates among less-educated Americans may have risen slightly. Between the early '70s and the early '90s the proportion of women with college diplomas whose marriages dissolved in the first ten years plummeted from 24.3 percent to 16.7 percent. Divorce rates among those with less than a college degree, meanwhile, increased slightly from 33.7 percent to 35.7 percent.

There is more there good and bad. Check it out.

Labels: Boomers, Culture Wars

Who says the skills of a Staff-Weeniewill never be put to work? After retirement, there are the fresh air and open skies of this job.

I could spend hours here....wait...I think I have. You don't even have to be an engineer to love math. I recommend the Hypocycloid.

Hat tip The Corner.

The folks over at ILYS have the best pics....

Everything you ever wanted to know about bunker busters is here.

"Meet Deep Digger, first of a revolutionary new generation of bunker-busting weapons, described in this week’s New Scientist. This is literally ground-breaking new technology which uses cannon to tunnel through solid rock, drilling a channel for the bomb.
...
Deep Digger is different. It does not depend on the kinetic energy of the warhead at all – in fact, it parachutes down. Then it stars drilling. The weapon is limited only by how deep the drilling process can go, which is a matter of how deep it can ‘muck’ (clear debris from the shaft). And although the details are classified, that is much, much deeper than any kinetic weapon will ever go. In the tests last year, it demonstrated a tunneled down ten meters -- about 50% more than the BLU-113, which is the current record holder."

Way too cool.....and it makes a hole in the shape of a Magen David. Oh, the irony.

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NB: I may not be online again until Sunday night. One of those, "Phibian, what do you have on your calendar..." 10 lbs of crap in a 3 lb bag...... Anyway, check back now and then to see if I sneak one in.....but here is something tactical to talk about.

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