Nothing to see here, move along . . .

Beaten, but not defeated?

2007-05-02T20:57:00.000Z

Some of my colleagues and I have been engaging in idle speculation about the impact that psychological defeat has on the growth of an insurgency in the aftermath of a conventional military defeat. Note that the flavor of insurgency we're talking about here is one that emerges in the aftermath of defeat and occupation by a foreign power - not insurgencies that grow to resist foreign occupation over generations (e.g. Tibet) or insurgencies that seek to impose regime change on a local government (e.g. the FARC.)

What role does the psychological impression of losing the war that a population experiences play in their later willingness to restart or continue hostilities - through participating in or supporting an insurgency, for example? That is, does a population that doesn't experience defeat "up close and personal" somehow retain more of a will to resist than one that does? For example, neither WWII nor the American Civil War saw the emergence of a significant insurgency (yes, I know about the Ku Klux Klan and I know that the US Army was dealing with isolated acts of resistance into the early 1950s, but neither period saw resistance coalesce into something that could have changed the outcome of the war.) Both of those wars ended with the population on the losing side experiencing total defeat and social collapse. The Iraq war ended with the decapitation and replacement of the existing regime, but without the population experiencing national defeat. Is that a factor in the current insurgency? If so, what does that say about current warfighting techniques - do they render the defeat of a nation's government too bloodless to pacify a population? Or would an Iraq insurgency have risen regardless, given early US mistakes in the aftermath of Saddam's defeat?

Experimentation

2007-04-13T22:19:00.000Z

The post below is a work of fiction, pretty much - I'll probably start doing more of that, since it's my blog and I can, but I'll always identify it as such. If for some reason, I ever go so far as to post poetry, I promise to post a prominent warning in plenty of time to click next. If you're not interested, just skip over it.

A short story, not translated into English

2007-04-13T22:06:00.004Z

(A note on pronunciation: Terms that are in all caps, should be pronounced as individual letters, eg RPG is pronounced are pee gee. Lower case has been used to indicate that the term is pronounced as written, even when common military usage is to put the term in all caps. For example, TIC is rendered tic and pronounced as "tick.")

Viper Six Zero, Viper Six Zero, this is Cobra Four Seven Dismount. Troops in contact. I say again, troops in contact. Taking heavy machine gun, small arms and RPG fire from the northeast. Grid to follow. Break...

Viper Six Zero this is Cobra Four Seven Dismount. Grid is Two Six November Mike Delta Three Seven Five Four Two Six. I say again Two Six November Mike Delta Three Seven Five Four Two Six. How copy, over.

Viper Six Zero copies Two Six November Mike Delta Three Seven Five Four Two Six.

Roger, good copy. We are taking fire from a ridgeline approximately three hundred meters to our northeast. Enemy is maneuvering at least two squad size elements towards our position. They are continuing to engage our position with machine gun and RPG fire from the ridgeline, over.

Roger, Cobra Four Seven, we are working cas now. Break... Death Magic Seven Six, this is Viper Six Zero,over.

Death Magic copies all. Diverting Banshee to tic, approximately three zero mikes out from Cobra Four Seven's position, over.

Death Magic Seven Six, this is Cobra Four Seven. Good copy and thanks, over.

Cobra Four Seven this is Viper Six Zero, what is your situation, over.

We're a little busy here for sitreps, Viper Six Zero. We are returning fire. We have the elements that were maneuvering in our direction pinned down for now. All fire so far is from the northeast. Enemy does not appear to have NVG capability. No casualties at this time, over.

Roger, Cobra Four Seven, we'll have Predator on station in five mikes. Viper Six Zero standing by.

Four Seven Dismount, this is Four Seven Mobile on Fox Mike. We are moving blacked out, east on Route Green towards your position. We will attempt to take up a flanking position, over.

Mobile, this is Dismount, Fox Mike. Call when due south of our location, and we'll try to vector you in on the bad guys, over.

Dismount, Mobile, wilco, out.

Cobra Four Seven Dismount, this is Viper Six Zero. We have Predator on station now, break... ISR reports approximately twelve pax on the ridgeline at Mike Delta Three Two Four Six, break . . . There are two groups of approximately four pax each in the rocks to the southwest of the ridgeline, approximately one hundred and fifty meters from the main body, how copy, over.

Roger, Viper Six Zero, we have visual on all three groups. The map shows an east-west road running two hundred meters to the north of the ridgeline - can the Pred tell if we can get our mobile element up in there?

Wait one, Cobra Four Seven . . . Cobra Four Seven, this is Viper Six Zero, roger, there's a turnoff approximately two klicks east of your location. If the mobile element turns left there, it will take them about seventy five meters behind the ridgeline to the north. Be advised, ISR reports two bongo trucks parked on the road near the main body of the enemy. It looks like there may be six or seven pax with the vehicles, over.

Roger, Viper Six Zero. Dismount, this is Mobile, Fox Mike. We copied last from Viper, and will bypass your location and make for the road north, over.

Mobile, Dismount, roger. Call when making the turnoff, over.

Dismount, Mobile, wilco, out.

Cobra Four Seven, this is Death Magic Seven Six. Banshee reports three mikes out. Will push to your fox mike, over.

Good copy, Death Magic.

Dismount, this is Mobile, Fox Mike. We are making the turnoff now, over.

Roger Mobile, We are taking sporadic fire. The bad guys still haven't moved closer to us. ISR sees two vehicles and several pax on the road to your front, over.

Roger, Dismount, approaching the vehicles now.

Viper Six Zero, this is Cobra Four Seven Mobile. Troops in contact. We are driving up the road to the north of the woodline and taking fire from the bongo trucks to our front, break . . . Appears to be AK and PKM fire. We are engaging, over.

Cobra Four Seven Mobile this is Viper Six Zero, roger, over.

Cobra Four Seven this is Viper Six Zero, Predator reports that the two elements closest to you are withdrawing to the ridgeline, over.

Roger, Viper, we are engaging them at this time, over.

Cobra Four Seven, this is Banshee, Fox Mike. We are over your location now. What is your situation, over?

Roger, Banshee, we are still taking sporadic fire from the ridge line to our northeast. Our mobile element is engaging two vehicles on the east-west road to the north of the woodline, over.

Roger, Cobra, we have the enemy pax on the ridgeline, over.

Roger, Banshee, this is Cobra Four Seven Actual, fire mission, over.

Send it, over.

Banshee this is Cobra, from my position Two Six November Mike Delta Three Seven Five Four Two Six marked by IR strobe, six five degrees at five hundred meters, marked by tracer and lasso, you are cleared hot, over.

Roger, firing one oh five.

Good hit, Banshee.

Cobra, Banshee. Remaining pax are fleeing north off of the ridgeline.

Banshee, this is Cobra Four Seven Actual. You are cleared hot as long as PID is maintained.

Roger, Cobra, engaging forty mike mike. Pax are fleeing north towards the vehicles.

This is Cobra Four Seven Mobile. We have movement off of the ridgeline towards the vehicles and are engaging.

Cobra, this is Banshee. One of the bongo trucks is moving west with approximately one zero pax. The other truck appears to be disabled and burning, over.

Roger, Banshee, you are cleared hot for the moving truck.

Roger, firing one oh five, break . . . truck is stopped. No movement.

Mobile, Dismount, Fox Mike. We are going to sweep north up the ridgeline at this time, over.

Dismount, Mobile, good copy. We will hold our position on the road, over.

Mobile, Dismount, roger, break . . . Banshee, this is Cobra Four Seven Dismount. We are moving north on foot to the ridgeline at this time, over.

Cobra Four Seven, this is Banshee, roger, how are you marked, over.

Banshee, this is Cobra Four Seven Dismount, a single group marked by IR strobe, over.

Good copy, Cobra.

Mobile, this is Dismount, Fox Mike, we are cresting the ridgeline now, over.

Dismount, this is Mobile, we have your strobe, over.

Mobile, Dismount, roger, we are going to look around here and then move to your location, over.

Dismount, Mobile, roger.

Banshee, this is Cobra Four Seven, Fox Mike. We have consolidated at the humvees and are preparing to withdraw. Thanks for the assist, over.

Cobra Four Seven, this is Banshee, roger, we will maintain cover until you withdraw, over.

Banshee, this is Cobra, roger and thanks, out.

Viper Six Zero, this is Cobra Four Seven Mobile. We have consolidated with the Cobra Four Seven Dismount element and are RTB at this time. We estimate approximately fifteen to twenty EKIA, two crew served weapons and two bongo trucks destroyed. All men, weapons and equipment accounted for. Thanks for all your help, over.

Cobra Four Seven, this is Viper Six Zero, roger, good copy on the sitrep. Glad everything is OK out there. Viper Six Zero, out.

And just who does this Publius guy think he is, anyway

2007-03-24T09:11:00.000Z

I noticed a couple of new comments on the blog today, which is what drove me out of virtual hibernation in the first place. Normally, I don't delete comments - except for the hideous comment spam that infested the blog before I turned on verification. But if a real live human takes the time to write, I'll leave it up, even if they disagree with something I've said, and even if they use bad language to express their idea.

Today, though, for the first time, I deleted real comments - two of them. Both of them were in reference to militarytracy, and gave her real name and her husband's place of assignment. There are a couple of reasons I felt like I had to get rid of them.

In the first place, there's some risk, albeit small, that someone might use the information against her or her husband. (Not a large one, mind you, even though I was on Ft. Rucker once and got to listen in on an over the top, almost hysterical lecture on the seriousness of the Islamic terrorist threat in Lower Alabama.)

The biggest reason is that I believe strongly, as long as someone doesn't misrepresent their situation, the decision to interact on the web pseudonomously should be respected. I think that we need to respect the marketplace of ideas, and part of that is letting people who want to discuss their ideas without attribution do so. Sometimes, people are at risk of retribution or intimidation for their ideas, and other times they might feel that their ideas are better presented without association with a specific gender, race, class, or background, and I think that's appropriate. Ideas should stand or fall on their own merit, and there should be a mechanism that allows people to express their ideas without fear of reprisal. So, I'm strongly opposed to "outing" people who choose to post behind a pseudonym. And please spare me the post-modern deconstructionist take that you can't understand the idea without exploring the "ideological biases" of the person behind it. That's just an excuse for turning opposition to a particular idea or point of view into an ad hominem argument instead of thinking it through.

Now, that changes if someone publishes pseudonomously and claims to be something they're not in order to give themselves greater stature in a debate. If someone starts a post "as a wounded soldier, I believe . . .", and it turns out they've never been in the Army, then, yes, they should be exposed - and ridiculed. And, of course, I'd make an exception if someone announced that they were doing something illegal in a post somewhere. Other than that, if someone chooses not to identify themselves, I'm OK with that, which is why I felt in necessary to delete those comments.

You're right

2007-03-24T08:44:00.000Z

I haven't been posting much lately.

I haven't been blogging while I've been out of town, largely because I have almost no time, and because I'm concerned that I won't be paying attention to what I say and something might go terribly wrong. For example:

10:38pm I've finally got my satellite modem working, and I thought I would try my hand at live-blogging while on patrol. We're setting up a recon site now. Bob and I got dropped off and then walked in from the checkpoint right where the southern canal crosses the station road. Man, it was a long walk - eight and a half klicks due south from the paved road by the checkpoint.

11:56pm We finally got the hidesite set up. We have a really good position. We're pulling surveillance on the Muhbas family complex, and we set up on the hill just to their north - right under this ring of ten date trees - one interesting tid-bit: the locals actually call the road next to us "Ten Trees Road" because of the trees right here where we are.

12:30am Wow, there sure are a lot of Iraqis out tonight. There seems to be a gathering at the farmhouse below us. A lot of Iraqis with RPGs and AK-47s down there.

12:40am Some old guy just came out of the farmhouse carrying a laptop computer. He seems upset about something. He's yelling at the other guys and pointing. Funny how you see modern technology even among the dirt farmers here.

12:42am All the Iraqis just left the farmhouse. They seem to be coming this way. Strange . . .

12:51am I have never in my life seen this many Iraqis this close.

and so on.

But I'm still around - so far - in case anyone's wondering.

The Tao of warrant officers

2006-10-16T20:20:00.000Z

(Warning: This post contains material regarding blatant disregard for uniform regulations and is not appropriate for individuals holding, or aspiring to, the rank of sergeant major. Command sergeants-major, sergeants-major, first sergeants, and exceptionally hard-assed platoon sergeants should go here.)

One base I was passing through recently is large enough that, except for the occasional mortar attack that's more irritant than threat, the war is "out there" on the other side of the perimeter. While on base, its like an exceptionally strict stateside base that you can never leave. People are constantly on duty, and for some people, that includes enforcing petty regulations and uniform requirements.

One of the most sacrosanct and silly army uniform requirements revolves around "headgear." One always wears a hat out of doors and one always removes a hat when going under cover - except that one always wears a hat while "under arms," which is, of course, thanks to army regulations and tradition, not simply the same thing as being armed. And, if you ever want to spend an instructive half-hour of hair splitting interpretation that would be admired for its sophistry by the most exacting of Talmudic scholars, ask a senior NCO to define "under cover", with particular reference to outdoor pavillions, awnings, and the separate roof thingies over some gas station's pump islands.

Also, for the following to make sense, you have to understand that one of the tenets of the army is that anyone can issue an on the spot correction for uniform dicrepancies, even to an individual of higher rank. Some NCOs live for catching officers "out of uniform" and issuing the on the spot correction. By tradition, such corrections are always graciously acknowledged and usually even acted upon - usually.

I was trying to catch up with one of my friends, a chief warrant officer, coming out of the main DFAC (pronounced "dee-fack", by the way), the chow hall for a huge number of conventional troops and the occasional SF guy stuck on the wrong side of the base for lunch. He, as is often the case with SF guys, and even more often the case with SF chief warrant officers, didn't bother to put his hat on for the 50' walk from the chow hall entrance to the parking area where we had left our Defender.

Of course, he didn't make it 10' before he was called on it: "Hey sir," a fearless buck sergeant with an "I caught you" smirk on his face said, "you need to get yourself a hat." Unfazed, our hero patted his leg pocket and felt for his hat as he passed the sergeant: "No," he replied, "I've got one right here in my pocket, but thanks, I appreciate it." He smiled cordially at the sergeant and continued his hatless walk to the truck.*

*This sort of thing is, by the way, one of the truly wrong reasons that people want to be SF warrant officers.

Notes on this post:
1) Please don't think that I'm making light of the threat that all of us - no matter what our job - live under here: yes, people can get hurt or killed, and I have the greatest respect for the bravery that our people show in coming here, especially the mechanics and cooks and clerks and technicians and logisticians who didn't sign up to close with and destroy the enemy, but who do their job and keep things running every day under the threat of IEDs, ambushes and mortar fire. God bless and keep all of them.

2) Someone remind me: in a later post, I'll explore why the army has all these stupid rules and why they're actually a good thing for Big Army to have - and not just because they drive everyone who can think "outside the box" into SOF.

3) Yes, to my everlasting discredit, I already had my hat on when this happened.

I finally got here

2006-10-11T21:45:00.000Z

I made it in late last night after a 48 hour wait and a 7 hour flight on a C-5, and I have to admit, this arrival was much better than getting to Afghanistan. I suppose it's because I've already done this, but I didn't have the sense of disorientation that I had the first time. In fact, everything had an almost eerie "been there, done that" feeling to it.

Also, of course, what a difference a few years and big Army makes. When I got to Afghanistan, we arrived at 3am local and, for my first night, I got assigned to a tent across from the airfield at Bagram. The tent was a GP medium, and I was in it with five other guys with nothing but our gear and some army cots. I assumed that the people who had set the tent up had neglected to put in the floor, but in the morning I discovered that the floor was simply covered with 4" of sand. Sand was everywhere, and blew through the tent on a hot wind all night, and, because we were close to the airfield, I got to wake up to the sound of C-130's taxiing every half hour or so. For our comfort, there was a row of porta-potties with accompanying smell immediately behind the tent. It was a pretty miserable way to start a war.

But then, I don't suppose there's really a good way to start out a combat tour. This time came much closer though. I got through with the inevitable in-processing and drew quarters for the next few days until I get to something permanent. I'm sharing a room (OK, it's in a plywood hut, but it's sealed) with one other guy - there are two single beds (with mattresses!) and a wall locker in the room, and (if you can believe it) an actual air conditioning unit in the wall. A bit down the way is a latrine and shower - a much nicer way to start out my time.

Of course, I also know enough about the army to know that it can't last. But I'll enjoy it while I can.

On the road again

2006-10-09T11:36:00.000Z

For anyone who's interested, I'm in Europe right now, waiting for a ride to Iraq (Amazingly, the aircraft I was on broke down in a cool European area, and not in the Middle East - funny how that sort of thing always happens to the Air Force.) Hopefully, more to come soon (This means that I'll have to get on the ball and finish my Afghanistan stories so that I can start on some new ones.)

Frater, ave atque vale

2006-09-11T02:59:00.000Z

It's been a long five years - please remember the victims of 9/11, and the fallen heroes of 9/11 - the firefighters and police officers who gave their lives doing their duty. And, too, remember the unsung heroes among the victims - the ones who could have gotten out, but didn't, because they were helping others.

It's appropriate and fitting to mourn today, but September 11th shouldn't be a day of sadness - it should be a day of wrath, until the threat of radical Islam has been wiped from the face of the earth. Only then is it appropriate to reflect on the anniversary with gentle remembrance - I'm afraid we too easily forget that. Until then, today should be a day of righteous anger, secure in the knowledge that, whatever our misteps and mistakes in "the long war", that this is a struggle of good and evil, and that our God is with us.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery Gospel writ in burnished rows of steel;
“As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal”;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Since God is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet;
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free;
While God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! While God is marching on.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, He is honor to the brave;
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.

Winning friends and influencing people, part one

2006-08-26T19:44:00.000Z

So, like I spend most of my life doing these days, I take a day and produce several tedious and fairly meaningless reports. This particular report runs to about 5 pages, and all the pertinent information is later extracted and summarized into 2 paragraphs, less than a page all told. The original report is then filed, and never seen again. So why not just write the 2 paragraph summary? Because, if anything ever goes wrong with a decision based on those 2 paragraphs, the original report can be dug out and referenced in any investigation. In keeping with the army love of acronyms, I call this one the CYA report.

But it turns out that I'm frightenly good at it. Yesterday, one of my reports that went to a new, and fairly senior person to review, comes back with a comment written at the top in red ink: "Thanks, you're all over this." One of my peers got back the same kind of report, only with a lot more red ink, and with the phrase "You're all over it" noticeably absent from the top. A sticky note on top politely requested that he try again.

He showed up at my desk and asked if I had to redo anything on my report. When I told him no, he grabbed mine off the desk and started comparing the two. While he didn't say anything, he didn't seem to be terribly happy for me when he saw the comment on the top of mine.

When he got to the middle section, he thrust both reports under my nose and said "I do not get this. These two are exactly alike." I looked and saw that, in the meat of the report, in addition to other comments, the reviewer had complained - in detail and at length - about the improper format that my co-worker had used. The format he used did look familiar, though, and I looked at the pristine, no red ink page in my report and verified that it was exactly the same format my co-worker had used.

So, I had to tell him "Well, you know, when you're all over it, you can afford to make a few mistakes." Somehow, that didn't seem to improve his mood any.

Showing my ass . . .

2006-08-08T23:27:00.000Z

When someone leaves a team and moves on to bigger and better things, its more or less a tradition that he get some parting gifts - a token of appreciation from the team for his service. That's especially true for someone who has a long tenure on a team, or who's done an excellent job, or both.

Mark, the second team leader for my first team, had done both - he had been on the team for awhile - longer than most captains get to stay - and he had done an incredible job, getting good training pushed through the company and battalion for us, working hard to make the team a great team without a lot of chickenshit, and walking that narrow line between being a good leader and a good friend, which is so hard that most military training manuals recommend that you not even try it.

So, when the team sergeant took up a collection to buy him a few things, we gave willingly to get him something nice. Usually you get a plaque or a statue as a going away present - the Bronze Bruce was a favorite choice. (The "Bronze Bruce" is a replica of the statue of the prototypical SF soldier, wearing a beret and jungle fatigues, with one arm cradling an M-16 and the other stretched out behind him as if to take someones hand and lead them to freedom. The statue used to be used to be across the road from Kennedy Hall, the headquarters of the Special Warfare Center, until it was - literally - relocated in a middle of the night raid and emplaced at USASOC headquarters across Ft. Bragg, soon after USASOC - the United States Army Special Operations Command - was stood up as our parent unit.)

We decided to go for a slightly bigger token, since we wanted to let him know how much we appreciated his leadership and service on the team. So, we got him what every guy on the team would want to get as their going away present - we got him a gun. It was a pretty Colt Model 1911A1 in a green felt-lined wooden display case with a brass plaque thanking him for his time with the team. We also gave him a team picture in one of those plexiglass frames that sit on a desk or shelf and that bend backwards at about 45 degrees so you can better see the picture - and that's where the problem started. Both sides of this particular frame were of clear plexiglass, and the picture slid in between the two layers - from the back, the back of the photographic paper the picture was printed on was visible, but thanks to the frame's clever design, that wasn't a problem - you couldn't really see the back of the photo unless you canted the frame well forward. So, we took a picture of the team, in berets and BDUs, standing in a line smiling and facing the camera and slipped it into the front of the frame facing forward. We also took a picture of the team, trousers dropped and bent over, not facing the camera but still smiling, and slipped it into the back of the frame. The thinking was that it might be weeks before he discovered the second picture, and - with any luck at all - that he wouldn't find it himself, but rather have it pointed out to him by a visitor to his office who sat down across from him at his desk and noticed the back of the picture frame.

That's not how it happened. We had a little going away party for him and invited wives and girlfriends, close friends and family - Mark brought his parents and his wife. After a little eating and drinking, we directed him to the presents set out on the table. He was awed by the gun, but in true good-guy fashion, he directed his remarks to how much he had loved being on the team, and what the presents meant to him. His voice broke a bit and his eyes were misted over as he regaled our guests with how much being on the team had meant to him. At one point, overcome with emotion, he picked up the team picture and held it up above his head and looked up at it. As he continued to talk about the team and how he felt about us, I could see the shock or amusement on the faces of the guests, depending on their personality. Mark's mother gasped, his father chuckled. The longer Mark went on, the more people were looking at the back of the photo holder, and the more they were grinning and giggling. Finally, Mark noticed what was going on, flipped the photo over, and burst out laughing.

I visited him a few years later, and sure enough, he had the photo - both sides - on his desk.

No, really, I am back

2006-08-08T00:06:00.000Z

Well, I announced my return from retirement because I really, really thought that I would have copious amounts of spare time - I've been back in the army (still a National Guardsman, but watching my civilian career wither on the vine thanks to multiple periods of active duty over the last few years) since February, and I recently moved into doing something that looked like it wouldn't take a huge amount of time - but it turns out that it does takes a huge amount of time to well, so my plans to return to writing regularly are going to be delayed by a few months. I'll post here when and as I can.

And no, whether fortunately or unfortunately, nothing I'm doing right now involves actually doing army stuff like shooting, jumping out of airplanes (except a "Hollywood jump" every three months on a clear day over Rhine-Luzon or Sicily for pay), or blowing things up. If I get time someday, I may be able regale you with stories of wrestling out of control copy machines into submission, long-range sniping at presenters during briefings, set-piece battles over proper formatting of Powerpoint slides, and risking daily injury from paper cuts or printer toner in the eye.

I am going to forward a suggestion to MG Parker (the commander of SWC, otherwise known as the John F Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, otherwise known as the John Wayne School for Wayward Boys, otherwise known as the "green beret" school) that, in the best interests of actually accomplishing our mission, they stop teaching hand to hand combat and survival to make room for typing classes - and don't get me started on how we should be training incoming operators on Powerpoint as a substitute for a decision, email and IM as a substitute for an op order, and Excel as a substitute for a relational database.

And now, I'm going to bed at 9pm to make up for several late nights and a weekend of my life I'll never get back getting some critical reports that absolutely, positively had to be filed away and never seen again by man by the first thing this morning. Even scarier: Next time I post, I will try to address at least one of the pictures of me "in various states of undress", since someone actually emailed and asked. You've been warned.

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dogface

2006-07-21T02:23:00.000Z

Well, she's back . . . I got an email today, pointing me to a few posts (in the comments on this blog, apparently devoted to trashing some guy called Ducktape Fatwa - visit if you want, but if you're like me, you'll want a long soapy shower afterwards) by militarytracy (you remember, the one who celebrated the deaths of contractors in Iraq on dKos, apparently on the grounds that they made more money than her husband did.)

It seems militarytracy a) knows me, and b) has found my awful secret - I'm not really a soldier (I seem to recall my drill sergeant expressing the same opinion, years ago.)

My post about her comments on Daily Kos made it into a running battle over on the Ducktape Fatwa site. Militarytracy's response:

Hey Catnip, that blog you linked to isn't a soldiers blog. The guy has never served in the military but adores special forces. He's part of the 101st fighting keyboardists, you know those guys who are the war loving bloggers. I stand by what I said and I think just about every soldier I know would stand with me. Dynacorp, Blackwater Security, Custer Battles they have all murdered innocent Iraqi civilians at will and there is no recourse. My post from Kos was attempting to explain to other posters who these contractors are and how they conduct themselves in Iraq, which is above the law. Markos was one of the first people I ran across who understood what the contractors were doing and how horrible it was, but I guess he would since he lived in a war torn country as a child. I pick on the war bloggers when I have PMS, it's a personal problem.
and

He's a skydiver Catnip and he claims to have done jumps with different forces from all over the world, you can pay to have those experiences. It's part of his worship of special forces thing, he arranges to have jumps with them. He would never put his real ass in the line of real fire though or sign on a real dotted line and maybe get killed. Lots of cheerleading though and love of the bloodlust. He doesn't recognize the difference between a soldier and a soldier of fortune (mercenary) either, that was why he was offended by what I wrote about the contractors that were killed in Fallujah. He thinks that once you have been special forces you are GOD and anything you do to anybody after that is an act of GOD and if you were a mercenary when you did it that's even cooler.

Let me make a few points - first, everything in my prior post about her personal issues with contractors still applies. She's still speaking about things that she knows nothing about, and, judging by her posts, she's still a reprehensible human being.

Second, although I'm tempted to quote the old Airborne saying that starts "I don't care how many skydives you've got, . . . ", I won't. Skydiving is not the same thing as jumping (skydiving is, in fact, much closer to Military Freefall - I'm not going to express an opinion as to whether civilian freefall jumping is more or less dramatic than a military Airborne operation, but its a very different attitude. I will say that I think I would know if I knew Tracy, since I'd probably be appearing as a witness in a commitment hearing. And as far as "once you have been special forces you are GOD", hey, Tracy, you said it, not me.

But, more important, while I appreciate the "heads up" about what's being said about me (and the opportunity to make a few snide remarks), I really don't care. Life is too short to get drawn into the personal problems of someone like Tracy.

It is an interesting problem, though. Since I'm not going to publish my name, rank, or current unit of assignment, a reader here can choose to believe that I'm in SF, and that I've put my "real ass on the real line" or not. For those who enjoy what I have to say, welcome. For those who have concerns about whether I'm making it all up as I go, I can only refer you to the subtitle of this blog.

Well, I'm back

2006-07-17T06:16:00.000Z

. . . to what I'm sure will be a deafening silence. (Hey, is this thing even on. . .I can't hear anything . . .)

For the two or three people out there who had their brother in law configure an RSS feed of my blog and now can't turn it off: Hi, I'm back, although I don't know how much I'll get to post over the next few months.

I apologize for the sudden hiatus and a year's silence - between (what turned out to be) a truly disastrous business venture last year and a failure of an unrelated, but theoretically also for profit project for technical reasons, I was a bit overwhelmed and unable to keep up the blog (although for a while I strongly considered either turning it into a book or a "will manage software development for food" site.) Especially since the whole thing took part across a backdrop of personal problems that came to a head with my return from Afghanistan. Fortunately. I had managed to put my life back on an even keel by February. I could tell it was February when my life cme back on line, since that was also the month that I was ordered back on active duty in the Army, where I remain today and for the foreseeable future.

As time permits, I hope to resume posting the stories of my military life, as well as whatever rambling and irrelevant political or personal digressions I might make from time to time . . . (the "fresh-brewed" tea crap that Lipton has in the those new soda fountain dispensers that are supposed to look like tea urns, tastes nothing like tea - or like anything else that any rational human being would want in their mouth. There, I said it and I'm glad I said it: Where I come from, sweet tea, brown and syrupy almost smoking from the cold as it's poured over the silver white of cracked ice, with a sprig of fragrant mint, bright and green in the top of a sweating glass, is a man's birthright.)

However, please don't hold me to a schedule. It looks like my life might be busy and eventful for the foreseeable future, so I don't know how much time I'll be able to spend here.

I am grateful that the blog didn't go to waste, though. Fortunately, it's unused space became home to that most prolific of all life forms in the blogosphere, the comment spammer. Since this army of mindless bots were my best readers (hey, that's cool, my blog was kinda like Daily Kos for a year), I suppose I owe them a response to all the neat information they posted here (I would have gotten to it earlier, but I was, metephorically speaking, shoveling the crap out of the yard :)

for those who would like to sell me golf equipment: If you actually knew anything about my golf game, you wouldn't be trying to sell me golf equipment - you'd be paying me to start taking tennis lessons.

While I'm glad that so many people are concerned about my impending demise at the hands of black mold, please don't post comments to that effect in the same week that I watch The Blob on late night - like I don't have enough to have nightmares about.

And, thanks for the info on discount GPS equipment, but I get my GPS equipment from the US Government, where there's - believe me - absolutely no discount involved.

And let me just me suggest that, that when following a link for discount SKYDIVING equipment, remember that caveat emptor isn't just a good idea, its a good idea in Latin, OK?

Sometimes I felt like a real sense of community was emerging among the blogbots. I'd see comments praising my insights, and then attempting to take the conversation to the next level by redirecting it to what seemed at first to be a irrelevant concept, but with medidation and reflection, became clear.

Some of it rose to the levels of poetry and philosophy - asking the age old questions: Who are we? How do we interact? How do we deal with disappointment? And asking with a spare elegance so rarely seen today :

Hello ##NAME##, surfing the net today for information on ##LINK## and found your post. ##TITLE## wasn't even what I was surfing for. Your post cerainly got my attantion, but can see why I found your post on related information. Keep up the good work.

Hi there ##NAME##, I am out searching for the latest information on ##LINK## and found this site. Although ##TITLE## wasn't what I was looking for, it certainly sparked my attention. I can see how, I came across this site when I was looking for related information. I am glad I stopped by today.

Finally, To the guy who offered me free adult website hosting about a dozen times - no thanks, in the first place, although there very well may be some pictures of me or my team in various states of undress and / or drunkenness, I very much doubt there's a paying audience for them - but I will tell how one of them came about, if anyone's interested. In the second place, while the army is all about helping the entertainment industry present the military as a fun place that any eighteen year old would love to hang out in, they inexplicably frown any suggestion that there's any screwing going on 'mongst the troops. So, tragically, no second career as a director blending the adult movie genre with the war movie - no Blackhawk Goes Down, in other words.

Although, it's a thought. I did have one person who wrote me to accuse me of writing "war porn", since I didn't wallow in the fear, or misery, or loneliness of combat when I wrote. Well, yeah, true enough, and I didn't dwell on those things at the time, either. If you do spend all your time thinking about how awful those things are, then you start getting all poopy-faced and ultimately, it can take all the fun out of the fear, misery and loneliness experience.

After all, there are two kinds of combat incidents that become war stories: ones that suck while they're happening become adventourous or amusing war stories, while those that are still going to suck a year later become horrifying or touching or inspiring ones. I try to stay away from those when I can, both in the field and on the printed page.

Whoops, another digression. Maybe a year away has made me less disicplined about interrupting my own internal monologue and abusing my audience with completely pointless asides. My old English Teacher, with only fading memories of the less metaphoric uses of the phrase, would no doubt consider it as indulgent self abuse, since I'm abusing the audience only out of the selfish belief that my unformed raw thoughts, unfiltered by learning, culture or even the discretion that thought teaches. My psych teacher would leap up and claim that no, I was abusing the audience through the instrument of my own ego in the hopes of creating a dynamic with an audience that had learned that it liked to be abused, in order to bask in the reflected glory of the presenter. Then, the audience and I would leap up and order, beers and ales, sherries and cognacs, brandy and whiskey, and would bring about a bond our own way.

I'm thinking about writing a book about my experiences, and, if I go on in this vein, I'll be making some smart and caring girl a fortune after her close association with me. There's a fortune for a girl who can make sense out of me,and more important, who can make me make sense out of me. They call these women (no,no, not wives, no jumping ahead) Story Editors. If I find one that I like and that can tolerate me, maybe the project to turn bits and pieces of this site into a Real Book will go forward. Or, if not, maybe I do have a career in war porn:

SCENE: An army barracks with row on row of identical bunkbeds and footlockers. Here is an environment where all individuality is withheld, suppressed, waiting to come crashing out. The lighting is dim and shadowy, with the fans that move the sultry air creating shadows that cut the night like a whip. Soldiers are in various states of undress. down to skivvy shorts and t-shirts in some cases. The platoon sergeant, however, is still fully dressed, the creases in his khaki shirt and green wool pants still sharp, albeit a bit wilted. He pushes his campaign hat back out of his eyes and speaks:

PLT SGT: Some night, private, if your out there in your fox hole and you see it, sudden like, thumping down in front of you, you'll have to throw yourself on it:you've no choice,really, it's for the squad, for your mates that you do it.

PRIVATE: But how will I know?

PLT SGT: No worries, my lad. I'll know. You can trust old sarge!

PRIVATE: God, Sarge, does it hurt, does it hurt bad?

PLT SGT: THere are things you can do to ease the pain. Your in a good squad, lad. The boys 'll help you there. After all, it's better that you all should know how to respond for the good of the squad.

OTHER RANKER: Some lads are prepared with special cream that makes it less painful or gets it over quicker. Others try to contain the explosion with their hands instead of doing more certainly but more painfully by driving it into a crevice of the body."He sighed wistfully."Really depends on what you relationship to the squad is, does't it?"

PRIVATE (Slow, slow pause, followed by his gaze panning around the barracks and lingering on the PLT SGT's chest, with all the metals.)

PRIVATE: Sarge, this isn't about the throwing yourself on a hand grenade bit at all, is it?)

So, do I have a future in this or what???
Of course, I couldn't focus on developing the war porn business immediately, since madness invaded the SFAG blogsite and submitterbizz, once a well liked and restrained bot went spastic:

Hi Special Forces Alpha Geek, If you would like to send your ad to the best opportunity seekers please click here multi-safelist blaster. http://www.submitterbizz.com/ multi-safelist blaster

After the 25th comment, I started to see their point.

I suppose that I can sum up by saying that I'm ecstatic to have a list of the best quality urban products - products that the urban community should be grateful for. I know that I am. With this list, I can quickly decide who to avoid based on accoutrement and attire instead of actually having to talk to them to discover that they're absolute pillocks.

And last, for those automatic comment spam posters who came across my blog by looking for information on road construction safety equipment, all I can say is I'm sorry that the blog wasn't exactly what you were looking for, but thanks for posting the link entitled road construction safety equipment that actually goes to a website on interest free credit. I'm sure glad that someone has exactly the information you want. Now fuck off.

Appropos of nothing, word verification is turned on for comments. People who can either a) pass, or b) fail interestingly a Turing test are invited to email me with comments about how to manage comments here on this site.

Oh, and by the way, if anyone out there is glad I'm here, thanks - I'm glad I'm back.

Jumping with the Brits, part two

2005-06-12T00:33:00.000Z

After our adventures in balloon jumping at Wesson-on-the-Green, we needed three more jumps to get the requisite five to qualify for British parachute wings. The next two were non-tactical jumps from a C-130 (non-tactical jumps are otherwise known as "Hollywood" jumps, meaning that we were only jumping with parachutes on- no weapons or other combat equipment) into South Cherney DZ. South Cherney was not a large DZ, but it was reasonably close to an airfield that could take a C-130 . That meant that we could jump in the morning, drive back to the airfield and jump again after lunch, and still have some time left to train on the British lowering system for their Bergens (the Brit version of a rucksack - I liked it better than ours because it was just this huge rucksack without anything attached to the outside. It made it harder to find stuff, so you had to be more organized in packing to get to things quickly, but it was a lot less likely to hang up on trees, aircraft seats, etc.) As it turned out, we never did figure out how to use their lowering lines with our rucksacks, so we didn't get to see how well the hemp rope held up.

We grabbed and donned our parachutes and filed onto the C-130. Sure enough, as soon as we sat down, the RAF crew chief started making his way around with boxes of some sort of fizzy lemon drink and packs of "biscuits." We all rushed to eat the biscuits and drink the lemon stuff before we jumped. It gave us something to do, and besides, while we didn't have a clue about where the custom came from, we didn't want the RAF to think we didn't appreciate being fed every time we boarded one of their planes. We did barely have time to finish up and make action stations, though.

The first jump was pretty uneventful, except for the inevitable cross-cultural communications difficulties. On an American jump, the first jumper in the stick stood in the door, one foot on the edge of the deck, both hands outside the aircraft, ready to hurl himself out - and the rest of the jumpers lined up close behind him. The Brits stood by, waiting about halfway between the door and the centerline of the aircraft, and did a kind of "hut, hut, hut" jog out the door when it came time to go. So, the RAF dispatcher gives us "Action stations" (and remember, that's all the warning you're going to get from Brits before it's time to take the leap of faith) and we go through the whole stand up, hook up routine on our own. Our fearless team leader, George, was leading the stick out of the aircraft, and, after ensuring that all of us were in fact, hooked up and reasonably likely to survive the jump, he stood in the door, the toes of his lead foot over the edge of the deck, and both hands outside the aircraft. The dispatcher, thinking that he was about jump when he wasn't supposed to, grabbed his hands and pulled him back inside the aircraft. George, thinking the dispatcher didn't trust him not to fall out of the airplane, got annoyed, shrugged the dispatcher off, and got back in the door. The dispatcher grabbed him again, and again George shrugged him off. This time, the dispatcher, apparently thinking that our fearless leader didn't realize it was the dispatcher dragging him out of the door, approached from the side, and placed one arm in front of George's chest while attempting to wrestle his near hand off the door. Realizing that George had inexplicably taken a death grip on the door, the dispatcher slapped George's wrist, knocking his hand loose from the door. George turned his head and glowered at the dispatcher, and grabbed the door again. Again the dispatcher slapped it loose. Again George grabbed the door. Finally, in the middle of the game of slap hands, the dispatcher noticed that we were, in fact, over the drop zone, and motioned and yelled for us to go. George jumped and we followed, all of us jumping American style: "up 6 and out 36" (inches), instead of the jog out the door preferred by the Brits. Graciously, our hosts counted that jump, even though when it was all over, the dispatcher did ask George about "what the fook he was fooking doing fooking around in the door of the fooking aircraft?"

I jumped out and noticed that the DZ wasn't very big and was separated from a highway by chain link fence topped with barbed wire. On the other side of the road was a tract of suburban housing. Fortunately, none of us landed near the fence, and, after gathering our chutes up, we had a nice picnic lunch their on the drop zone and then took a bus back to the airfield.
That morning had been another beautiful, cloudless, warm day, but by the time we got on the bus the wind had started to pick up, and, by the time we got back, had a brief but colorful and memorable lecture from the dispatcher on the proper actions in the aircraft, and started to get back on the C-130 for our afternoon jump, it was blowing pretty hard. I had a bad feeling about the wind speed, but assumed that the Brit's had the same rigid rules about jumping with wind that we did, and figured the jump would probably be scrubbed. (Unless it's an actual jump into combat, static line operations have to be suspended if the winds at ground level gust up above 13.5 knots. As it turned out, that was apparently the British rule as well, only . . .)

But, the jump must go on. While our aircraft was lining up on the approach for the first stick, one of our guys was standing on the DZ and chatting with the Brit who was running things. The Brit asked Don if "his lads" really wanted to get British jump wings. Don told him that we were looking forward to getting them and that we wanted them pretty badly. According to Don, the Brit then held an anemometer up, watched it gust to 20 knots and told his radio operator "Winds are 12 knots."

The first pass was an all Brit stick - apparently, with the winds, they figured that the only polite thing to do was to put four Brits out first as "wind dummies" to see where the winds would carry us when we jumped. They went out and we started our racetrack for the first pass. I figured that after one or two minutes, we'd get action stations and start getting ready for the jump, but as the plane flew around, we sat there with not word from the dispatcher. The plane circled again, and still nothing. Finally, as the plane started in on the third racetrack, the dispatcher stepped over to where we were and leaned in close. "We've had a spot of trouble" he yelled over the noise of the C-130. "One of our lads had banged himself up proper on the jump, and they're seeing to him now." (We found out later that he had broken his leg.) I felt bad for the guy, but also felt a profound sense of relief - the winds were marginal anyway, and somebody had gotten hurt. Obviously, the jump was scrubbed. My relief was short-lived, however, as the dispatcher continued. "So we'll have to wait until they've dragged his carcass off the D Zed before we can put you lot out." Oh goody. We were going to get to jump anyway.

Sure enough, after a few minutes, we got action stations and a few minutes after that, go. I jumped out and felt myself being hurled away from the aircraft by the slipstream. A few seconds later, my 'chute opened. That's where, under normal circumstances, I would have started drifting down towards the ground. In this case, though, I looked down and realized that I was doing a good imitation of a kite broken loose on a windy day: I was screaming across the DZ right towards the fence, and the highway, and the housing development. I started slipping the riser to dump off some forward speed (slipping, on parachutes without a steerable canopy, is pulling one of the risers - the straps that hold the canopy to the harness - in the direction that you want to go. It's not much of an option, in terms of steering, but if it's all that you've got . . .)

Holding the slip all the way to the ground, I managed to land - hard - about 30 feet away from the fence, and then continued to move towards it, as my inflated canopy caught air and starting dragging me across the ground. Instinctively, I reached for the quick release on the riser, and . . . didn't find it. Oh, right - this was a Brit parachute, and didn't have quick releases on the risers. Great. That used up about 10 feet of the alloted 30. I started struggling with the dial of death, trying to get it open, and finally got the straps undone just as the canopy hit the fence and collapsed. I skidded to a halt with a few feet to spare, gathered up my parachute and trudged in across the DZ. It was a good jump - in the sense that any jump you walk away from is a good jump.

Our fifth and final jump was a tactical night combat equipment jump into a field problem. Aside from some scheduling issues, it seemed to be a straightforward jump. Of course, the scheduling issue had to do with the British Army's astounding efficiency in making use of limited amounts of land. We were jumping into a sheep pasture - the sheep had been removed earlier, but we shouldn't be surprised if we ran into a few stragglers - and in the briefing, the OC (officer in charge) told us that we needed to make a real effort to get our gear policed up and get off the DZ as quickly as possible. We were jumping at 9pm, and at 11pm, they were using the pasture for a night mortar fire exercise, so - don't be late. I wondered how the stragglers among the sheep would fare, and then I realized that we had always had plenty of mutton sausage every day for breakfast. Now I knew why.

We were jumping a "stretch" model C-130 with some extra troop seating aft of the door. I was lucky enough to get the seat right by the door, which meant that I would have to walk forward when it came time to hook up and jump. That didn't seem like a big deal at the time it was being explained to me, but it turned out to be one of the scarier things I've done in my jumping career. Soon after we boarded, and while we were still working on finishing the requisite snack, the dispatcher stood up, checked his harness to be sure that it was securely fastened to the inside of the aircraft, and opened the door. There I was next to it, still seatbelted in, and in my parachute harness but without a reserve on (when jumping static line, the main parachute deploys automatically, and cannot be deployed manually by the paratrooper - the reserve is the only chute the paratrooper can deploy on his own.) We were cruising probably 1000 or so feet off the ground, and as I watched the night rush by below me, I decided, action stations or no, as soon as he closed that door, I was going to put on my reserve. But he didn't close the door. Instead, he looked around and yelled "Action stations!" According to his instructions, that was the point that I was supposed to unfasten my seatbelt, move forward of the door, and get rigged up for the jump - to include putting my reserve parachute on. Surely not. Surely, yes - the dispatcher was gesturing at me with a "come here" hand and arm movement. He apparently thought that I had forgotten what to do. No, I remembered. I just didn't remember anyone mentioning that I would get to amble across an open aircraft door without a reserve on. Reluctantly, I took my seatbelt off and took the short stroll to the area to the front of the door. The rational part of my brain made a point of telling me how unlikely it was I would fall out. The scared to death part of my brain made of point of telling me how much it would hurt if I did.

We made the jump, gathered up our equipment, and made our way off the DZ without either scaring up any lost sheep or encountering any mortar fire. We turned in our chutes, and rucked off into the night into a very nice tactical problem our hosts had set up for us.

Jumping with the Italians

2005-06-09T20:31:00.000Z

I think T-10's story about the German Auslander parachute course reinforces my point about why people don't really freeze in the door. He was behind an Italian jumper who stopped in the door because he expected an individual tap-out and T-10 ran right over him (um, err, "assisted him out the door.") I've been in a stick before where the guy in back (big, big guy, about 6'3" and very muscular, came to us courtesy of the 82nd) started making train whistle noises and stamping his feet quickly on the deck in imitation of a train making it's way down the tracks right at the 30 second warning. Even if stopping in the door seemed like a good idea at the time, it wasn't a feasible alternative. In the parlance of the US Army Airborne, the last guy in line is "pushing the stick." Sometimes that's a literal description.

I've never jumped with the Italian airborne, but I have a friend who has his Italian wings, and he swears that the story he tells is true (for whatever that's worth): On his third or fourth jump, while he was inspecting his static line, he noticed a frayed spot in it. So, he stops sending up the OK signal and instead, throws his hand over the anchor line cable to signify a problem. The jumpmaster comes back, looks at my buddy's static line, gets this huge look of concern on his face, whips out his knife, cuts the frayed portion out of the static line, ties the two ends together with a square knot with a half hitch on either side, gives my buddy a huge smile and hands the static line back to him. My buddy jumped anyway, although he says it was against his better judgment.

Which M-4 did he have?

2005-06-09T19:25:00.000Z

While it doesn't materially change my opinion of what happened, there appears to be some difference of opinion on what weapon Lt. Pantano was equipped with. I thought that the USMC procured the M4A1, not the original M-4 (which shares the "3-round burst" design flaw with the M-16A2.) Does anyone know generally which version the Marines use, and specifically, which version Pantano was equipped with?

Lt. Pantano

2005-06-07T16:32:00.000Z

I originally wrote the following post in the comments on this article regarding the resignation of Lt. Pantano. As many of you know, I think that he got a raw deal in this case. Mustang23 disagrees, and offers a thoughtful, reasoned discussion of his point of view. He suspects that there was an understanding that lesser offenses wouldn't be considered against Pantano in exchange for his resignation. I hope not, but it does go to show that even soldiers who have "been there, done that" can have different interpretations of whether something is right or wrong. As I've mentioned here before, I've seen a long-time friendship end over whether a particular shot was justified.

I do think though, that absent some clear indication of malice, the proper forum for such discussions is the AAR (after action review.) I think that we do need to be seen punishing those in our ranks who wilfully violate the law of land warfare, or who act unlawfully out of hatred towards the enemy. But I don't think that, absent a clear violation or malicious act, decisions about tactics and rounds fired, etc. need to be debated in the pages of Time, or decided in a military court. All that incidents like the aftermath of the Pantano case do is demoralize the troops, and introduce another layer of doubt into the most uncertain situations imaginable.

With that said, here's what I said about Mustang23's post:

I'm afraid that I have to disagree with Mustang23, a soldier for whom I have a great deal of respect, at least in terms of his feeling that there was a lack of proportionality in Lt Pantono's response. I'm not convinced, at least from what I've seen in the case, that 2 mags worth of ammo was overkill. The 5.56mm NATO round is woefully ineffective as an immediate manstopper, and I can certainly envision a situation where, even after 30 rounds, a human body or two is still moving around - in the worst case scenario, with enough conscious control to move a finger and detonate a remote controlled IED in the car before expiring.

If he was justified in shooting at all - and I strongly believe that he was - he was justified in shooting until all movement ceased and the two threats were completely, totally and finally dead.

If I were in the same situation - faced with a potential carbomb and two men who appeared threatening, and who could potentially have a device as small as a keyring door opener that required as little as a single slight finger push to detonate the carbomb - I don't think that I would fire a few rounds and stop to evaluate the situation. I would fire until both bodies were conclusively incapable of any further movement. And, to be honest, I doubt that I would even notice that I had changed magazines. For a well drilled marksman, a magazine change is a pretty automatic act.

I wasn't there, but my interpretation is that the nature of the enemy dictated his response - for the enemy to threaten his life and the life of his men did not require an obvious, overt gesture like pulling the pin of a grenade or pointing a weapon - all it required was that the enemy press a button on a concealed detonator.

The cyclic fire rate on an M-4 is 600 rounds per minute, or 10 rounds a second, or 3 seconds per magazine - and it takes less than a second for a trained shooter to make a magazine change. Again, I wasn't there, but the whole thing could easily have taken place in far less than 10 seconds, under the extreme stress of close quarters combat, within killing range of a potential carbomb. I'm not willing to second guess the number of of rounds fired under those circumstances. (And the reports I've seen indicate that he was armed with an M-4, not the M-16A2 with its ridiculous burst mode, so emptying a mag would require one trigger operation, not 10.)

Which leaves only the calling card as a possible offense. Was leaving the calling card wrong? Maybe - it's certainly something that US units have done in past wars. I don't know what the RoE says about it, but absent a clear prohibition in the RoE, I don't think it's a sufficiently heinous to be career ending. And I don't think that it would have been, absent the hysteria over the premeditated murder charge.

I do think that Mustang23 nails it when he says that "this has been a black mark on the Corps and needs to be buried." I also agree with that, given the media attention that would have followed him around, Pantano would have been ineffective as a combat leader. At this point, whether or not there was a quid pro quo agreement, I don't think that he had a real alternative to resignation - given the embarrassment the Corps caused itself through him, had Lt. Pantano stayed on, he would have been a pariah in the Corps, and certainly would not have been afforded a opportunity for a meaningful career.

I disagree with Mustang23 over the root cause, however. Absent some detail that hasn't been made public, I don't think Pantano's actions that day have been demonstrated to have been wrong. (It would be different, for example, if it came out that Pantano had paused, ensured the two men were dead, and then fired into their corpses to mutilate them, or if it came out that the RoE emphasised that calling cards were prohibited. But I haven't seen anything like that established in the reports I've read about the incident.) I think that the Corps overreacted to the potential media response if Coburn went public with an allegation of murder (which is why I believe the commanders on the ground were overruled) and Pantano paid the price.

Maybe, given Coburn's allegations, the Corps had no choice but to prefer charges, and given the media attention those charges engendered, maybe Pantano had no choice but to resign. I'm not convinced, though, that the whole situation couldn't have been handled in a way that preserved the career of a good combat officer and ended that of a substandard NCO, instead of the other way around.

And, while I agree that a "poor example to the troops" has been set, I think that it has been set by a Marine Corps JAG officer somewhere who has let the troops know that, if they resort to automatic weapons fire in close quarters combat, they stand the chance of being subjected to excessive and automatically career-ending scrutiny over that choice.

A wise old sergeant major once told me that "you may love the Army, but don't make the mistake of thinking that the Army loves you back," and I think that applies here to the Marine Corps as well. Pantano loved the Corps, but when, at least from what I know of the case, through no fault of his own, he became a liability to them, they cut him away like a screaming bag-lock. The Marine Corps has a fine sense of public relations, and I think that in this case, they let that overcome their sense of honor.

Jumping with the Brits, interlude

2005-06-06T03:29:00.000Z

Let's see, a few questions in the comments here . . .

Oh yeah, they had a climbing frame at one of the bases where we stayed, but it wasn't tied to the airborne stuff - our hosts just thought we would enjoy it. And, back in the day, one of the coolest things the radio guy could do on an extended field problem was pull out the AN/PRC-74 and tune in commercial shortwave stations - BBC World Service was always a favorite.

In theory, if somebody jump-refuses in the door, the jumpmaster is supposed to give them three chances to jump (by yelling Green Light, GO!, three times) and then pull them out of the door. I've never seen it happen. In practice, unless you were the last man in the stick, I don't think that you could stop in the door - once the adrenaline gets going and the stick starts moving, you're sort of swept away by events - besides, the guy behind you would probably run right over you. If you did freeze in the door, by the time they could get you out of the way, the drop zone would most likely be long gone, so yes, the aircraft would have to racetrack and make another pass.

Although I've personally considered being a jump refusal about eighty times, I've only actually seen two jump refusals in my entire career - one was on the aircraft in Airborne School on our first jump: one of the trainees decided that the life of a paratrooper was not the life for him, but that happened pretty much as soon as we took off. The other one happened on the ground, when two experienced 82nd Airborne NCOs psyched a kid fresh out of jump school into not jumping. We were about to jump into phase one of the Q course, and our lift was delayed because the first lift had someone hurt on their jump. The two experienced jumpers fell to describing and embellishing all the grisly airborne accidents they had seen, heard of or could make up on the spot, and the poor kid let it get to him, which ended his SF career before it began - but both of the jump refusals happened before they could interfere with the jump.

And yes, you can wear one pair of foreign wings - pilot or parachutist - on your dress uniforms. Foreign wings go above the right pocket. If you've earned more than one set of foreign wings, you get to pick which ones you wear. British wings on the US uniform are kind of a pain, because the British normally wear cloth parachutist wings sewn onto their uniforms. Wings on the US uniform have to be the metallic pin-on type, so you have to search around to find pin-on British jump wings. Supposedly, the British wear metal pin-on wings on their dress-mess uniforms, so you can find them in a metallic version for sale, but for all I know, the only people who buy them are Americans who wear them as foreign wings.

I'm an old jumper, but not that old: SOF troops still start issuing jump commands at six minutes, but then, we're jumping a dozen or so people at a time instead of 64. On my one (and please, my only) jump with the 82nd Airborne, they started at the ten minute mark. (I had just graduated the Q course, and was riding around Bragg with a friend of mine who was in my class. He had come from the 82nd, and his Sergeant Major had given him a lot of help and encouragement in moving to SF, so he wanted to go by and say "Thanks." I went in with him, and in the course of the conversation, it came out that I had gone straight from jump school to the Q course. The Sergeant Major told me that, if I was going to be airborne, I should understand what a real airborne operation looked like. They had one going on the next night, and my friend and I were invited to strap-hang. Let's just say that I never understood the "mass" in mass tactical until that jump.) And, until I jumped with the Brits, I'd never seen the dial of death - although the more experienced jumpers with me recognized it right away.

If the current Brit harness and chute is based on the version they were in the process of modifying, it's a great chute - and the harness is much more comfortable than ours.

And, finally, I don't jump out of "perfectly good airplanes." I jump out of military airplanes. Back when I started jumping, flight crew pay used to be $150 a month, and jump pay was $110. Flight crewmen used to claim that was because their job required greater intelligence than jumping, but our take was that the extra $40 a month compensated them for the additional danger of landing - we got to get out before then. Actually, jumping is one of those things that's scarier than it is risky - Something to do with our monkey brains screaming "Don't fall out of the tree!" at us. Once you get through that, it's a hell of a ride.

Jumping with the Brits, part one

2005-06-02T14:46:00.000Z

(Read a comment on my blog from Special Constable, which got me to thinking about the times I trained with the Brits, which leads to this:)

Back in the '80s, when I first got into SF, the "threat" was still the Soviet Union, and my team's wartime mission was to respond to the Russians screaming hell for leather through the Fulda Gap. Thanks to the hard and dedicated work of various leftist and anti-war protesters, that never happened, and the Soviet Union eventually ~~collapsed under its own weight~~ peacefully disbanded, despite an unprecedented arms build-up by the United States. Unfortunately, war-mongering reactionaries led by Ronald Reagan actually believed that confronting and combatting the Soviet's aggressiveness would do more good than acquiesing to it. Sadly, Maggie Thatcher supported the US in this position - yet, despite all that, the noble members of Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Green party succeeded in preventing war, although much to their chagrin (and that of the New York Times), the wrong side fell apart. Fortunately, the left now sees another chance to take down Western civilization, and the same apologists and advocates for communism have turned their support to the radical Islamic world.

Even though World War III never happened, we did get to spend a fair amount of time in England and Europe training for it. Training with British units was always an exceptional experience. Their parachute infantry and special operations units (read the SAS) were consumate professionals, and the training was invariably challenging and realistic (and occasionally humbling.) During one rotation, in addition to the other training they had laid on, the Brits had set up an opportunity for us to earn British "jump wings." The rule of thumb for qualifying for a foreign parachutist badge is that you have to jump with the foreign nation's equipment, intermingled with their personnel and using their jumpmasters. Some countries take a pretty loose view of the rule, sending a jumpmaster and as many jumpers as they can round up over to the US for a "wings exchange." In a wings exchange, they let us jump with their equipment and jumpmasters, then they jump with our equipment and jumpmasters. Usually only a single jump is required to qualify, a brief ceremony awarding each other new jump wings is held, and then a massive amount of beer is consumed. The Brits, however, were sticklers for the rules (even if not averse to consuming massive amounts of beer.) Although the training was abbreviated from their regular jump school, we did have to go through training on their equipment and jump procedures, and we had to make the requisite five static-line parachute descents.

Jumping with them was a fascinating trip back in time. The parachute harness was cotton webbing, and the "d-bag" (the deployment bag that holds the parachute) was canvas. When jumping equipment, the rucksack was lowered with a hemp rope. The parachute harness was fastened closed with a round buckle device in the center of the chest that had been discontinued by the US years before, and replaced with quick release snaps. Because the buckle had to be turned before the parachutist could get out of the harness, and because, in the case of water landings, or high winds on the DZ, getting out of the harness quickly is a matter of life or death, the old-style buckle was known as the "dial of death." Prepping for a jump had all the atmosphere of getting ready to jump into North Africa in World War II.

It's not that they didn't have a more modern parachute: they did, and it had just been introduced into service - and just as quickly taken out of service. It was a wonderful harness, much more comfortable than the American T-10 (the T-10 leg straps come up between the legs through the crotch, which can be distressing when the sudden stop from the parachute's opening pulls them taut, while the Brit harness leg straps wrapped around the leg.) Unfortunately, the Brits had very experienced paras test the new chute - no problems. Then they introduced it into their jump school, where they found out, if the harness wasn't adjusted correctly, the opening shock from leaping from an aircraft going 120 or so knots and suddenly decelerating would send the jumper sliding right out of the parachute. The parachute would then waft gently to earth without the jumper, whose descent was extremely rapid by comparison. They were working on modifying the new chute when we were there, so they were mostly using the old equipment. We did get to jump the (un-modified) new chute a couple of times - they figured we were experienced enough to tighten the harness down and avoid the problem (and we were, too: when I jumped the new Brit chute, the harness was so tight that I couldn't stand up straight, and nearly passed out from not being able to breathe, but I didn't fall out.)

The Brit paras also had a more nonchalant approach to jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. It is holy writ in the US Army that before any jumper exits an aircraft, he will be inspected (JMPI'd - for Jump Master Pre-Inspection) by at least two jumpmasters. The British took a much more laid back approach - their attitude seemed to be "you rigged it, you ride it." The only inspection I recall ever getting was a quick "Alright, mate?" and a slap on the back getting on the aircraft.

Their more laid back approach extended to the mechanics of exiting the aircraft. In the US, jumpers are completely rigged up long before they jump. Then, 10 or 20 minutes before the jump, they start to receive time warnings. At the six minute warning, the jump commands start: "Get Ready!" The jumpers undo their safety belts and take care of any last minute items to be stowed. "Stand Up!" Jumpers stand up in the aisle between the nylon webbing that serves as their seats. "Hook up!" Jumpers hook their parachute static lines to the anchor line cables that run lengthwise through the aircraft. "Check static lines!" The jumpers check to ensure the static line is properly connected to the anchor line cable, and then trace the static line as far as they can, checking for any tears or frayed spots. Then they check the remainder of the static line of the jumper in front of them. "Check Equipment!" The jumper checks the security of his parachute harness, helmet, and (if jumping combat equipment) his rucksack and weapon, to include lowering line. "Sound off for equipment check!" Starting with the rearmost jumper, each jumper slaps the side or butt of the jumper in front of him and sounds off with an "OK!" If the jumper's equipment or static line is not OK, he places his arm over the anchor line cable and does not send up the check. When the jumper in front get's his OK, he looks and points at the jumpmaster and yells "All OK, jumpmaster!" Meanwhile, two or more safeties - qualified jumpmasters - are moving up and down the line of jumpers doing their own visual inspection of jumper equipment and static lines. Then the fun starts - a few minutes before the jump, the troop doors at the rear of the aircraft are opened, and the jumpmaster begins his door checks, ensuring that the door is safe to jump. Meanwhile, the wind from the slipstream is roaring into the aircraft, and the first few people in the stick have a terrific view of the height they're going to jump from. Additional time warnings are given at one minute and at 30 seconds. At the 30 second mark, the jumpmaster gives the command "Stand by!" The lead jumper walks back to a position 2-3 feet away from the door and the stick of jumpers behind him shuffles tight. (Actually, at the time, on a C-130, the command was "Stand in the door!" and the lead jumper actually took his place in the door. I understand why they did away with it - standing in the door gets in the way of the jumpmaster spotting the DZ, and it increases the chance of the first paratrooper falling out prematurely - but I still miss it. John Wayne stood in the door, by God. He did not "stand by.") The last command is "Go!" and the jumpers go out the door, "maintaining a good one second interval between paratroopers" according to the book, or "shotgunning the door" and getting out as fast as humanly possible, sometimes literally on top of one another, according to the old school jumpers in the 82nd Airborne.

The Brits reduce all of the above complexity to two jump commands: "Action Stations!" and "Go!" At "Action Stations", you finish putting on your parachute (the Brits didn't put on the reserve chute until right before jumping), stand up, hook up, check yourself out and shuffle back to the troop door all on your own. Meanwhile, the dispatcher (the British equivalent of a US jumpmaster - unlike the jumpmaster, however, the dispatcher is an Air Force crewmember and not an army paratrooper) is opening the door and getting his end ready. Unlike the iron-clad rule in the US, the dispatcher isn't shy about opening the door before the jumpers are hooked up. "Go!" at least, works the same as it does in the US.

But, to the everlasting credit of the RAF, you could not get onto one of their aircraft, under any circumstances, without getting at least a snack. Our first jump from an airplane entailed a flight of less than 10 minutes, and yet the second we got on the bird, the crew was passing out a carton of lemon drink and "biscuits" (shortbread cookies to us.) The USAF could definitely take a lesson from them in terms of hospitality.

Our first couple of jumps, though, weren't from airplanes. The British para school at Brize Norton kept an old World War II barrage balloon around, and they had rigged a steel frame cage with a waist high guard rail as a jump platform below it. When I saw it, my first response was "Cool - helium balloon!" The dispatcher set me straight - it was a hydrogen balloon. Hydrogen was twice as light and cheaper than helium. "Oh great," I thought, "for four solid weeks they've been warning us about the danger from IRA terrorists, and here I am about to get on a bag of hydrogen in an open field surrounded by farmland. One pissed off Paddy with a rifle and incendiary round, and I get to star in Hindenburg - The Sequel."

It turned out that I didn't need to worry about the balloon catching fire, though. At least it hadn't happened up to that point. What I did have to worry about was the cable connecting the balloon to the winch that raised and lowered it snapping. That had happened in the past, and the balloon tended to ascend rapidly. The drill for that situation was to jump off the platform as quickly as possible, before you ended up making a parachute descent from the stratosphere. Or, as our dispatcher put it "If the fooking cable breaks and I tell you to go, don't bother looking around and saying "Pardon?", because you'll fooking be talking to yourself." If the cable didn't break, you jumped from about 600', which made for a short ride, considering that it took a good 3-400 feet for the parachute to open.

And actually, nothing went wrong. Jumping out of the balloon was one of the nicest experiences of my life, mostly because of the quiet. Usually when you jump, it's out of a hot, noisy airplane, and you can enjoy the ride, but not the build-up. From the balloon, you could look around and enjoy the surrounding countryside - it was a cool summer day (by the standards of the southern United States, anyway - our hosts thought it was hotter than hell) with a nice breeze blowing and a gorgeous view of the rolling hills of the surrounding farmland and the small village off to our left. We had clear blue skies with only a few fluffy white clouds. When I jumped, it was more like a roller coaster than static line parachuting. A nice, smooth descent with none of the buffeting from the slipstream that makes the first seconds of a jump such a wild ride. I could watch (and feel) the ground rushing up at me, and it was so quiet I could hear the whirring sound of the parachute's suspension lines sliding off the pack tray, and the popping of the rubber bands that held them in place. The only problem was that it was too short. We tried to convince them to go higher for our second jump, but the laws of physics got in our way. The higher the balloon, the more stress on the cable, and the more likely it was to break. So 600 or 700 feet was pretty much it.

My second balloon jump took place right at dusk. It had cooled off to the point it seemed just a bit chilly, and with the sun just down, the lights of the village had come up. As we prepared to jump, I could hear the buzz of conversation and the muted clink of glassware drifting over the fields from the nearby pub. I stepped off the platform and fell through the shadows of the evening until the parachute whuffed open ghostlike above me. A great ride, and the best part was, somebody was paying me to do it.

In fact, only one of us had any trouble that day. One of our team sergeants there had inexplicably flashed back to his C-130 training and done a vigorous jump out of the balloon (up 6 and out 36 (inches) used to be the mantra for jumping out of a C-130, to make sure you cleared the door and didn't get slammed back into the side of the aircraft by the prop wash.) The same dynamic exit out of a balloon led our paratrooper to pitch forward as he jumped, and he ended up doing a complete front-flip through his risers. He didn't hurt himself, but he did become the hero of the British jumpers, who had never seen anything like it before, and urged him to do it again on his second jump.

Many of us, on the other hand, had a "spot of trouble" when we jumped out of the British airplane the next day, but that's a story for another time.

. . . and the familes.

2005-05-29T02:52:00.000Z

I got an email recently that took me to task for taking too lighthearted a view of war and military service. The writer seemed to feel that by not dwelling on death and fear and horror, I was leaving a false impression of how combat was. I didn't think too much about it at the time - his main point seemed to be that, by not making my experiences seem terrible, I might actually encourage someone else to join up. I've already mentioned in this blog that I wasn't one of those who paid a heavy price for my service, and I do want to encourage others to do their duty as citizens - if they decide that duty includes military service, then I want to applaud that decision and not discourage it. I thought about the email again, though, as Memorial Day approached. And everyone should know that, for all that I sometimes make light of my experiences in combat, there are people who have paid dearly for the things that we sometimes take for granted in this country.

Maybe all soldiers in combat don't pay a heavy price, but some do, and every family of a combat soldier does. The wives and husbands, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, spend their days living with the dread of seeing the Army staff car pull up into the yard. Every news report of casualties - a rocket attack in Ghazni, a suicide bomber in Baghdad - hangs over them, day and night, until the names are released. Was it him? Was he on the chopper, in the HMMWV, on the patrol that got ambushed? And when a soldier does go down, he pays the "last full measure of devotion" then and there. For the family, the butcher's bill is presented on the installment plan. The family pays with every missed birthday, every question from the young child, "When is Daddy coming home?", every lonely night with an empty bed serving as a perpetual memorial, every pang of loss down through the years.

In the town where I live, every Memorial Day, Main Street and the town square are lined with plain white wooden crosses about three feet high, each surmounted with a small US flag, and each with the name and war of a local son who died in one of America's foreign wars. Even though it's a small town, we have enough war dead to line both sides of several miles of road with crosses spaced 20' or so apart. Family names common in the area leap out as you drive by, reminders of sacrifices gone by and pain still remembered.

And sometimes that pain goes on for many long years. We have another Memorial Day tradition here: Every year, there's a commemorative gathering in the town square, usually in the week before Memorial Day so that the middle school can attend. There are speakers on the meaning of the day, usually military and political figures, and an invocation by one of the local preachers. Then the Honor Roll of fallen heroes is read, and it takes a while. Family members sometimes step forward and read the name of their loved one, and occasionally share a memory. I try to attend whenever I can, out of respect for the fallen and their families.

One year, not too many years ago, an old, old woman was seated behind the lectern, sitting in her weelchair, but dressed in her "Sunday best." She had been brought from the local nursing home to participate in the ceremony that day as one of the family members who came to remember their dead. She was frail, and on oxygen, and she struggled to stand when the time came to read the name of her lost soldier. She told us that when she was a little girl, her father had gone away to fight in World War I. She remembered lying in bed at night and taking comfort in hearing his footsteps, solid and heavy, as he walked down the hall to his bedroom. One night, after she had gone to bed, she heard his footsteps in the hall for the last time. He came into her room that night and told her that he was leaving for France, that he had to go away for awhile, and that he loved her very much. He never came back. He died in the Meuse-Argonne. As a little girl, she said, all the while he was gone, and even after she learned that he was dead, she would listen for his footsteps in the hall. And now, she told us, as she lived out her last days alone in a nursing home, after a lifetime of tending her family and raising her children, she would still sometimes try to catch the sound of his footsteps as she went to sleep. A long and full lifetime later, longer and richer than most, she still missed her father and, at times, wept for his loss. And she wept then, as she read his name.

Still alive

2005-05-26T20:44:00.000Z

Back again - after the driving, etc., school, I took a weekend off and then went straight into another short stint of army life. Unfortunately, that meant that I was living in army quarters which inexplicably lacked broadband Internet access, or even an easy way to dial up. So, I ended up taking a week and a half break from the 'Net, which meant no blogging for me.

I'm glad I volunteered for this one, though, even with the web withdrawl symptoms. A senior officer inexplicably had a really good idea - he has a bunch of troops who are getting ready for "overseas deployment," and he wanted to give them the best training he could. His troops are all what the army calls "service support" troops - rear echelon units like finance, maintenance, or supply. Unfortunately, on today's battlefield, there's no such thing as the rear anymore. Yeah, the infantry and SF go looking for trouble, but any soldier in any unit has a chance of being in the convoy that gets attacked, or standing gate guard when the suicide bomber makes his run. So, the senior officer in question and his entire command worked their butt's off to set up some realistic, tough tactical training for their deploying troops: a lot of ammo, vehicles, training lanes, an entire simulated base in indian country . . . and us. We were all combat leaders: infantry or SF, officers or NCOs, with recent combat experience - all members of the Combat Infantryman's Badge club's Iraq or Afghanistan chapters. Our job was to shadow the units going through the training, giving advice and supplemental training as needed, but more important, trying to instill the warrior ethos in soldiers who might need it very badly in the coming months.

(For those with military training experience, we weren't the O/C's - we were out there in addition to the lane Observer/Controllers, and worked with the unit, not with the lane or the training scenario. For those without US military experience, an O/C is a combination coach and umpire - the O/C runs the unit through the training scenario, and comes up with an evaluation of the good and bad the unit did.)

I was out there on the training lanes for about a week and a half, and the change in the unit I was working with over that time was nothing short of amazing. These were really good kids - they were motivated, hard-working, and, by the end of their training, cohesive and highly aggressive. They were even getting to the point that the Army wants to see in combat arms units, where that agression is tightly focused and controlled. On the last day, they were starting to execute their battle drills with precision and flair without losing their "stone killer" violence of action.

I hope that I had at least a little bit to do with their success, although certainly the lion's share of the credit goes to their own hard work and dedication. For me, it was fun to watch the unit blossom, to see it go from being a bunch of soldiers who were mainly technicians who's last tactical training was probably in basic training, to being a combat team, ready to take on whatever the day has in store for them.

On day one, if you had told me I had to ride in a convoy with them, I'd have been scared to death - by the time training was over, I'd have been happy to hitch a ride through bad guy land with them. I don't want to make too much of their transformation - were they at the level of the infantry at the end of the exercise? No. A few weeks of training doesn't substitute for a lifetime of it. But they're combat soldiers now, ready to execute in a bad situation. They're not crazy SF guys, who want to get into the fight, so I hope that "my guys" go their entire rotation without seeing action. But if they do, God help the poor bastard who attacks them.

Some good comments on my last post, by the way - although a few of you seemed a bit too, ummm . . . interested . . . in some of the more esoteric Tazer possibilities (you know who you are, bless you.)

A couple of questions about the gas chamber (wherein the soldier is exposed to CS (tear) gas.)Yes, I've done it a couple of times and it wasn't pleasant, but the purpose there is a bit different. The gas chamber teaches you to don and clear a protective mask under stressful conditions - the CS is there to simulate a chemical attack. Neither CS nor OC have anything like the disabling, painful effect of a Tazer, but then with a Tazer, when it's over, it's over - none of the residual suffering that chemical agents induce. I can tell you that given the choice between the three of them, I'd take the gas chamber every time - despite the painful and embarrassing running from every facial orifice. Of course, maybe that's because I haven't been in a CS chamber for a few years, while the Tazer suffering is all too recent.

Do I think that the training is applicable to conventional troops in OIF/OEF? In a word, yes. There may be some modification to technique in a HMMWV, but a lot of the principles carry right over. And the Army's qualification for HMMWV is woefully inadequate for the rigors of combat driving. (Of course, I spent a lot of time in Afghanistan riding around in a Land Rover, so you just never know.) And you're right, the Army doesn't have this training internally, so you have to go outside for it. If you can do it though, it's worth it.

Shocking, just shocking

2005-05-16T16:32:00.000Z

Sorry about the recent lack of posts - I just went through a great school courtesy of the US taxpayers (thanks, guys - you know who you are.) Unfortunately, the days were long, and when they were over, I was too tired to do much more than grab a beer and hit the rack.

More details on the course later - suffice it to say for now that I got to spend a full week driving like a maniac, swerving and weaving around cars, ramming my way through parked cars, and shooting out of and through car windows. The irony is that, after one memorable late night coming back to Ft. Polk from Tunk's Steak House, my team's SOP is to not let me drive. (In my defense, I'll just say that I hadn't been drinking and that I've never hit anything head on.)

One of my teammates who had been at Fort Polk and in Afghanistan with me was there at the course. On the last day, we were sitting in the front seat of a Crown Vic, right after I had driven him through a drive-by shooting course. He turned to me and told me, "You know, going through this course with you has really made me feel a lot better about your driving." That made me feel pretty good. "Oh," I said, "You really think my driving's gotten better?" "No," he replied, "It's just that I've gotten a lot more comfortable with car crashes and near misses."

Part of the class was a discussion of less-lethal options (the term less-lethal comes from the law enforcement community, and is short for "less lethal than taking a bullet between the eyes." It refers to a whole family of responses that could kill somebody but probably won't, ranging from a baton to pepper spray to the Tazar.) Thanks to this course, I'm now certified with the Tazer and with OC (oleoresin capsicum - pepper spray) which will come in handy if I ever decide on a law enforcement career.

Less lethal options seemed to be an odd fit with the rest of the class, but it was good training - I can easily envision a half dozen scenarios where I wouldn't want to kill somebody (either because they didn't need it, or because I'd rather our side get a chance to talk to them later) but wouldn't necessarily want to have to go hand to hand with them, either. I'd feel pretty comfortable counting on a Tazer to disable someone long enough to take control of them. I can personally attest that nobody's going to draw a gun or a knife while they're being Tazed.

And, by the way, I was wrong before about knowing what a Tazer felt like. When we first got there, we got a class on the Tazer that included a demonstration of its effects: The instructors got a group to stand in a horseshoe shaped line and link arms. Then, they wired one of the probes into the man at one end's shirt, and stuck the other probe into the shoe of the man at the other end. Once we were all wired up, the instructor cut the device on for a few seconds.

I'm told that a demonstration like that "checks the block" on the requirement for "live exposure to the device", which is required to become a certified Tazer operator. Unfortunately, the instructors at this course wanted to make sure we got our money's worth. During the practical exercise with the Tazer, we stripped to the waist and the instructors came by and drew a large black circle under our right shoulderblade to act as a target. Then we took turns firing the Tazer into our buddy's back and getting Tazed.

The worst part was that my buddy wasn't the first to take the shot. Once the instructor said, "GO," I heard several devices fire, heard the buzzing crackle of the Tazer operating, and heard the groans of pain from the guys around me. Then my buddy finally fired. . .

From behind, you can hear the "pop" of the barbs being launched a split-second before they hit. And then the ride begins. It lasts five seconds, and those five seconds last several hours. The Tazer is designed to disrupt muscular control, not cause pain - but dentistry is designed to fix teeth and not cause pain. In either event, the side-effect is there. The sensation is not unlike wedging your entire body inside a light socket. On the bright side, once the ride is over, it's over. There are no residual effects - it's like throwing a switch. Well, no residual effects aside from then having the barbs pulled out - they're wicked little fishhook looking things, designed to penetrate several layers of clothing and skin. When fired into bare skin, they embed all the way in. It doesn't hurt when they come out - the skin has been "desensitized" by the electricity - but they do start to ache later. Of course, by that time, we had been hit by pepper spray, so it didn't bother me as much as it might have otherwise.

Having been through "the five second ride", I can vouch for the efficacy of the device. I did come away with new concerns about its use by civilian law enforcement, though. When I was talking to him about it, a good friend of mine, who makes his living in law enforcement training, made what I thought was a good point: He said that there appears to be some danger of death or injury from the Tazer, but it's a lot less than that of getting shot. When the Tazer is used appropriately, as an intermediate step between empy-hand / restraint techniques and deadly force, it saves lives of both police and suspects. When it's used inappropriately, in situations where either restraint techniques or even forceful verbal direction are more appropriate, it's a bad thing. His take was that police officers who are overweight, or out of shape, or who lack physical or mental confidence in their training or ability, tend to resort to the device when it's not needed - and that kind of overuse is a good bit of what's creating the backlash against the Tazer. When one gets used against a verbally abusive arrestee who's already handcuffed and in a squad car (well, actually, he got shot, the officer in question confusing the Tazer with her sidearm) , or one is used against a six year old, it's clearly out of line.

The other thing I don't get about "less lethal" options is the whole insistence on exposure to their effects during training. I've heard a couple of justifications for it - that the trainee will have confidence in the effect if they're exposed to it; or that the trainee will be confident that the option is, in fact, not typically lethal if they choose to employ it. In the abstract, I can be convinced by either of those lines of thought. While I'm going through it, I tend to suspect sheer sadism. After all, I've never been to a M-4 qualification range and been told: "OK, it's 20 rounds from the foxhole supported position and 20 from the prone unsupported at targets between 50 and 300 meters away. After that, we're going to shoot you in the leg so you'll have confidence in the weapon."

Next time, just tell me how effective the Tazer or pepper spray are. I promise to believe you.

Thanks, all

2005-05-09T01:43:00.000Z

Some interesting responses to the proposal - I have to admit that, while I didn't expect anyone to read my blog in the beginning, I'm very happy with the little community that has grown up here. Thanks to everyone for giving considered, reasoned, thoughtful answers here. I can't think of very many venues where controversial subjects can be discussed without one incident of name-calling or flaming.

My own contributions here are likely to be shorter than usual - I'm in a school with the Army this week, and the days are going to be pretty long. I hope to turn it into grist for the blog mill later - I can tell everyone what it feels like to get nailed by a Taser now, and in a few weeks it will probably be funny enough to make a story out of.

I am sort of surprised about the whole Taser thing. While I didn't expect to get through life without experiencing one, I always sort of suspected it would be a sordid incident outside a bar at 2am, not in a training environment.

In a few weeks, it will also probably seem funny that I waited for a C-130 for 3 hours to jump yesterday and it never showed up - the Air Force had the wrong day on their paperwork - but right now it's just annoying.

Anyway, thanks to all for reading and participating here.

Oh, by the way: I think there's a lot of overlap between my site and Jack Army's, but if you haven't seen this, you should. If the take is at all correct, this kid is being punished for a teacher's poor judgment in attempting to end a phone call between the kid and his mother deployed to Iraq. Read it, and if you live in Georgia, give the State School Superintendant a call. Or, write your congresscritter and suggest they introduce a bill cutting off DoD impact funds for Muscogee County until the school there gets its act together.

And the correct answer is:

2005-05-05T03:57:00.000Z

I've seen more than a few strong opinions on the Maynulet "mercy killing" case, some of them in the comments on this blog - and that makes me curious. What is the "right" moral stance on mercy killing in combat? Which direction should the moral compass point in that situation?

So I'll ask my readers- what would you do? Let me lay out a scenario for you - perhaps not identical in detail to the Maynulet case. I'll try to set it up with no room to equivocate about the grey areas:

You're the leader of a movement through Indian Country, and you engage a Toyota Corolla trying to penetrate your convoy at a high rate of speed. After it's stopped, you send out a patrol and they report that the inside of the Corolla is wired for detonation - you've just stopped a suicide bombing attack on your men.

The driver of the Toyota, however, is seriously wounded, aware but unable to communicate - and he is in agony. He was eviscerated by a Mk-19 round that hit his door, and has a head injury. Your medic (who is a distinguished trauma surgeon in civilian life - you trust his medical judgment completely) attempts to treat him and comes up to you a few minutes later, seriously agitated. He tells you that there is nothing that can be done: the driver will die, but he may linger for minutes or hours in great pain before he does. The tactical situation does not allow you to evacuate the casualty. What do you do? Why? Do you base your decision on your understanding of the law? On what you think is the moral thing to do regardless of the law? What is the reasoning you followed to make your decision? (I could tell you that you have 30 seconds to make the decision under conditions of great stress, but I won't - I'm not trying to generate sympathy for Cpt. Maynulet here, I want to understand what course of action people would take and how they arrive at their justification for it.) Is there ever a time when obeying "objective law" about killing is evil - or does that law exist to mark the boundaries of a slippery slope too dangerous to ever traverse?

A caveat: If your response was "I'd tell the medic to give him an overdose of morphine," what would you do if the medic gave you a straight-up "Fuck you, sir. The morphine is for us. I have a limited supply. What do I do if one of us gets hit and I need it to treat him?"

OK, now that you've answered that question, let's look at a different scenario - same deal, except instead of a suicide bomber, it's one of your own men - but the tactical situation still doesn't permit evacuation. Does that change your response? If it does, does it make you reconsider the morality of the decision you made earlier?

And another situation - back to the suicide bomber, but now you have an embedded reporter from CNN with the convoy - you know him well enough to know that whatever happens will be seen around the world - either a video of you shooting a helpless, injured man, or a long panning shot of you driving away as he writhes in the street screaming. Does that change your response? If so, is it fear of personal consequences or an appreciation of the impact the video will have?

If it makes you more comfortable, my blog is set up to accept anonymous comments. Also, if you do choose to frame a reply to the hypothetical situation, please let me know if you're a veteran of close combat, or if you've trained for a job that is oriented to close combat (infantry, Ranger, SF, etc.) (NOTE: I'm not at all trying to set up a "if you haven't been there, you aren't entitled to an opinion" line of discussion, but I'm curious to see if there's a distinctly different point of view among people who have seen, or have been in jobs that made it likely to see, close combat.)

Answers will be graded for clarity, originality of thought, grammer and spelling - no, I don't think there is a right answer, and I'll reserve my own thoughts for now. What do you think?

I can feel the love.

2005-05-04T01:27:00.000Z

I was browsing around on snakeater's blog a few days ago, and I noticed that he had found an entry over Daily Kos way concerning the contractors who were recently killed in the helicopter shootdown in Iraq. (I have a great deal of admiration for people who are willing to make the daily sewage swim to see what they're thinking over there - I know I couldn't stomach it.) Apparently, the contractors who have been hired to do diplomatic protection in Afghanistan and Iraq are evil, evil people - and how do we know that? Because, before they were contractors, they were . . . special forces. SF apparently are shunned and disliked by all the rest of the army, and they only become worse if they retire and take a security contract. But let's let Militarytracy tell it in her own words:

I am a family member also of a person who served in Iraq and who will most likely be doing that again soon. My husband is an officer and he makes more than most people dodging bullets over there. I also know more than a couple of people who have ditched their uniform to work for "security companies" over there and make BIG MONEY and exercise their sick sociopathic tendencies. Most were special forces. We kind of have a joke in the military about who our daughters can date, everybody but special forces. Then there is that other joke that goes on about how the housing and training facilities for special forces are kept far away from the general military population, and then there's the final joke about how if you flunk your psych testing you can always train for special forces. I get too windy sometimes, so let me try to be short and sweet. The only fucking people who need to run around Iraq with automatic weapons and working for "our side" for any reason whatsofuckingever are people who answer to our military chain of fucking command and thereby the American voter and taxpayer and thereby follow the Geneva Convention to the fucking letter. If you had any idea how much these MERCs disgust and sicken honest military folk!!! It is no accident that these guys ended up hanging from a bridge in Fallujah or that their chopper was shot down. THESE FUCKERS ARE NOT NICE PEOPLE. I have a hard time feeling sorry for their families. I have known a few of these wives and if they are in the marriage they are so high on Prozac and Xanax they will barely know he's gone. Most are so gone from the marriage, hell, they may have a SAVED BY GOD AND RELEASED FROM HELL party. These are not nice people in any way, shape, or form. They have done horrible disgusting things over there that are going to curl our hair and crisp our brains when we get the whole skinny someday. I am personally disgraced and sickened that my country has these "THINGS" running around that country making more money than God and doing things that SATAN has only dreamed of! If one of their mommas is crying I'm somewhat sorry but I really want to ask that woman why she never got any help for her son, who was obviously a potential serial killer! I lay some of what that man became on her and his father's doorstep. I have almost no tears for these people. I can barely squeeze one out.

by Militarytracy on Thu Apr 21st, 2005 at 11:34:23 PDT

(Although, frankly, she seems to have as much trouble with the contractors making more than her husband does over there than anything else. Goodness knows how she and hubby are reacting to the $150,000 retention bonuses SF guys are getting.)*

(And I don't dare ask where that rant about her daughters not dating SF comes from - I'm afraid the officer class has been having a spot of trouble with the enlisted swine again.)

Not only are SF bad people if they work for security companies (excuse me, if they become MERCS who disgust and sicken honest military folk), but they plan and carry out atrocities just this side of Genghis Khan:

According to eyewitnesses, U.S. Special Forces supervised--some say orchestrated--the systematic murder of more than 3,000 captured Taliban soldiers in November 2001. That charge is the centerpiece of a documentary film, "Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death," expected to be released in the United States within the next few weeks.

"There has been a cover-up by the Pentagon," says Scottish director Jamie Doran, a former producer for the BBC. "They're hiding behind a wall of secrecy, hoping this story will go away--but it won't." Indeed, "Massacre" has already been shown on German television and to several European parliaments. The United Nations has promised an investigation. But thanks to a virtual media blackout, few Americans are aware that, on the eve of another war, their nation's reputation as a bastion of human rights is rapidly dissipating.

Well, if a BBC producer says so, it must be true.

But it's not our fault - really it's not. It's society's fault - we're really victims here - all of us in SF are the victims of a cruel uncaring government. The evil government makes sociopathic killers out of us, just like they did with this woman (Jack Army, I'm shocked that the truth about the ASVAB is only now coming out - why didn't you tell us?):

E: You also describe how your hatred of your father for killing Baby Rose fueled your “Nikita” assassin alter that worked for the federal government. Do you suppose a similar form of abuse is used to traumatize men in Special Forces?

K: I’m convinced of it. I have talked to enough of them now, the traumas that they are put through even during their training to break them down are severe. They’re bullied unbelievably, sleep-deprived, everything possible is done to them. They’re pushed to the point beyond pain. That anger’s got to go somewhere. My husband was pretty much conditioned the same way, so I know from his own experiences, yes.

E: So I wonder how far their training goes. The bullying and pain -- do you think they’re dissociated as well by trauma?

K: Absolutely. The other thing, too is that for a long time -- I don’t know how common it is now -- it seemed like they were choosing men who were already dissociated in childhood.

E: By means of that battery of tests that new recruits take?

K: Exactly. Of course, then they can create alter states in those men that are easily controllable, based on their already having been dissociated. That was my husband’s experience.

Sheesh . . . I think I liked it better when we were just stopping goat's hearts with our minds.

*Personal disclaimer: No, in the guard, we aren't seeing any of that money . . . I guess being a part-time sociopath pays less.

Would you rather be killed once, or killed 40 times?

2005-05-02T23:01:00.000Z

Fred Schoeneman left a very thoughtful comment on the Pantano case in my blog's comments below, and he has an even-handed post of his own on the affair. I disagree with his conclusions re: Pantano and Coburn, but there's no question that he's trying to throw light, and not heat, on the issue.

There is one point he makes that I do think is simply wrong, though, and it's a common meme that surfaces whenever somebody gets shot multiple times by soldiers or by the police. It's the idea that somehow shooting a dozen or forty or sixty rounds is prima facie, or at least presumptive, evidence of excessive force or brutality. It happened in the New York City case where police officers fired 41 rounds at Amadou Ahmed Diallo, and now it's being raised in the Pantano case.

Even though the legal and moral framework that soldiers and police operate under are very different, they do share one common principle: If you're justified in shooting once, you're justified in shooting as many times as you think it's necessary to end the threat. Shooting two full magazines, or shooting forty one times, is no more right or wrong than firing a single round.

When you shoot someone, you're not shooting to wound, but neither are you "shooting to kill." What you are doing is shooting to end your opponent's capability to take action - whether he lives or dies is irrelevant. If you shoot someone, you accept that the outcome will likely include their death - that's why they call it deadly force - but the outcome you want is their immediate and total incapacitation. Whether your opponent dies thirty seconds or six hours or two weeks later is meaningless if he gets the chance to return fire, or detonate the IED, and kills you or one of your comrades. On the other hand, it doesn't matter if he survives and recovers, either, as long as he's rendered incapable of action then and there.

There are a number of physiological and psychological reasons that it may take numerous rounds to incapacitate an opponent, or at least to be sure that he is incapacitated. There are examples of people taking many rounds before being "shut off" - that's especially possible in the case of drugs or, I suspect, religious fervor. In addition, an individual being shot will likely flail around, reacting to the impact, and under conditions of stress, it's difficult to distinguish that from purposeful action. Combat shooting isn't like the Sprint commercial where the guy takes a few steps between asking "Can you hear me now?" "Is he down yet?" is an immediate, binary, yes or no, black or white, question. You don't take a few shots, pause to see what's going on, and then take a few more shots - you shoot 'til the shooting's done, unless a higher priority threat comes into your sector.

Also, firing a large number of rounds in an encounter is made much more likely given the technology and training in use today. For example, the M-16 family of rifles (except for the asinine M-16A2) is capable of firing thirty rounds very quickly with a single trigger pull (that's not usually the preferred technique, mind you, but I won't second guess Pantano on that decison either.) Also, I've seen some comments that suggest that, since Pantano "took the time"to change magazines, he had time to deliberate before resuming fire. That's nonsense, too. To a well-trained, well-drilled combat marksman, changing a magazine when the gun runs dry is just as automatic and reflexive an action as aligning the sights and squeezing the trigger.

Too, the choice of round for the US military's rifle exacerbates the need to fire a large number of rounds to incapacitate an enemy. I've heard several explanations for the choice of 5.56mm NATO (Remington .223 - think a .22LR on steroids): one is that a lighter round means that more rounds can be carried for the same weight. Another is that the round is meant to wound instead of kill - the theory being a wounded man ties up more enemy troops to care for him than a dead man does. Whatever the reason, the standard military rifle round is not a decisively instantaneous man-stopper. (Hell, as I've indicated in some past posts, it's not even a reliable dog-stopper.) You simply cannot depend on one or two rounds of .223 ball delivered center mass to incapacitate an opponent. And remember, that's the name of the game - you don't want him to die later, you want him to stop trying to kill you now.

In short, while it's possible to disagree on whether 1LT Pantano was justified, how many times he shot has nothing to do with it. I will be disgusted and infuriated if that is raised as an issue by the prosecutors.

(Parenthetical Footnote: We do have more reliable rounds we could choose from, by the way: 7.62mm NATO (the tried and true .308 Winchester round) and of course, the .30-'06), both of which have proven themselves in combat; but the .30-'06 isn't used by the Army anymore, and the .308 is only used in machine guns and sniper rifles.)

Wires and water and trees, oh my . . .

2005-04-30T01:42:00.000Z

Ever since World War II, the Army's method of getting troops out of an airplane and into combat is by static line parachute. In a static line jump, the parachute is deployed automatically on exit from the aircraft, by a static line attached to the top of the parachute at one end, and to a cable in the aircraft at the other. In modern freefall parachuting, the parachutist can track (fly) towards a desired landing point before opening his parachute, and has a highly steerable parachute with a lot of manueverability after the chute is opened. In static line parachuting, with an immediate opening after exiting the aircraft, not very far to fall, and with only a semisteerable parachute, you're basically going to land where you're going to land. But that's not a bug, that's a feature: Static line parachuting is designed to get a bunch of people out of an airplane flying at a low altitude and onto the ground quickly with a minimum of dispersion.

You do have some control over the direction of flight - when jumping static line, US special forces jump a round chute that has steering toggles and holes cut in the back to give it some forward momentum (about 9.5 knots worth) and steerability. Even conventional forces like the 82nd Airborne, that jump the venerable T-10 round parachute with no steering toggles, can influence their direction a little bit by "slipping:" pulling on the riser (the nylon strap that holds the parachute to the parachute harness) in the direction they want to go. But you don't have a lot of control over where you end up. If the people planning the jump miscalculate the release point, or the winds at altitude, you may find yourself heading for an uncomfortable landing.

There are three major hazards you can find yourself heading for - water, trees and wires. (Sometimes a jump is deliberately planned for trees or water - that's a different situation calling for special equipment and planning.) I've never accidentally hit water, and never gone through wires, but I do have my share of tree landings - plus one near miss with a three story building.

The first time I hit the woods was many years ago, making a night combat equipment jump (a jump with a rucksack and weapon) from a Chinook helicopter. It's hard to hit the woods from a helicopter, but my entire chalk managed it that night (a chalk is all the parachutists put out in a single pass over the drop zone - if you're jumping from a high performance aircraft like the C-130, the same group is called a stick - I should know why, but I don't. Maybe the Air Force could afford sticks to line up behind, and the Army had to make do with chalk marks on the tarmac.)

Like I said, it's hard not to hit the DZ from a chopper, so it took a lot of work and cooperation from the jumpmaster and the pilots to get us into the woods. Fortunately, this was the first time the aircrew had dropped parachutist since it got certified to do so, and the jumpmaster was fresh from jumpmaster school and his requisite one safety before being allowed to jumpmaster on his own. It was just our team jumping into an exercise, and we wanted to put the entire team out, so we grabbed two jumpmasters from another team to run things (In a helicopter jump, the jumpmaster doesn't jump - instead of wearing a parachute, he's strapped into a harness - known affectionately as a "monkey harness" to keep from falling out the back.) One of the jumpmasters we's planned for, the more experienced one, got sick at the last minute, so we didn't have a lot of depth. Our company sergeant major, who was an excellent jumpmaster and was running the drop zone from the ground was having his own set of problems communicating with the aircraft, so there was every opportunity for things to go wrong.

It started with the blackout lights inside the Chinook - the Chinook was equipped with a row of red lights that wouldn't ruin your night vision, but the one right before the back had a cracked cover with a good bit of white light escaping - it was the last thing you'd see before stepping off the ramp.

The way we were jumping required the jumpmaster to spot a set of lights set up in an L shape - called a NATO L. The idea was that their was a reception party (a la the French Resistance, but in this case our sergeant major) on the ground. As soon as they saw the aircraft was coming in on the right heading, they would light the lights, the jumpmaster would see them, and we'd jump.
Under the jumpmasters direction, we went through the ritual of standing up, hooking up and checking equipment, and the crew chief opened the rear door and lowered the ramp. The red light beside the ramp came on, and our jumpmaster crawled out onto the ramp to spot for the panels.

We made three passes over the drop zone without the green light coming on. There's a special kind of agony that starts to build up when you stand up in a parachute harness and combat equipment for any length of time. The harness is pulled tight to minimize the snap from the opening shock of the parachute, and that, combined with the weight of the parachute, weapon and equipment, starts digging in and cutting of circulation. There's not a lot you can do to alleviate the pain - you don't have the option of sitting back down, and between having the keep the static line from getting looped around anything and having to keep the reserve ripcord grip from getting hung on anything, there's even a limited amount of squirming around that's possible. The last thing you want is to have to make multiple passes (called racetracks) over the DZ while people try to figure out whether to let you jump or not.

Finally, on the fourth pass, the jumpmaster stood up and gave us the command "Stand By!" Great, he had seen the lights, and we were getting off the bird. We shuffled closer to each other, and closer to the exit ramp. He knelt and peered over the edge of the ramp again, and stood back up. The jump light snapped from red to green. "GO!" The first man walked towards the ramp. I was the number two man, right behind him. As we headed for the ramp, it felt like the helicopter was changing direction, but it had to be an illusion - we wouldn't change direction once the pass had begun. I had carefully kept one eye closed because of the cracked light cover, but opened it walking down the ramp - and dammit, there went my night vision. I stepped off the ramp and started counting to make sure my parachute deployed in a reasonable length of time "One thousand! Two thousand! Three - ooof." It was a great exit - no twists and only a minimal opening shock. I reached up, grabbed the steering toggles, and started looking around to figure out where I was. I should have been able to look down and line up on the lights (they should have been set up in an L-shape and easy to spot) and figure out where the team was going to link up once we were all on the ground. I was a bit hampered by the afterimages of the Chinook light still floating in front of my eyes, but I didn't see any lights. I pulled one of the steering toggles and turned in a circle to take a look around - way, way off to my right, I saw a suspiciously L shaped glow. OK, if the DZ was over there - where was I? I looked down again and noticed my night vision had come back a bit. Below in the gloom, the ground had a suspiciously rounded and leafy appearance. Damn it. Looking down, I saw the road that ran off of the north of the drop zone - and the wind was blowing a bit in that direction. If I "ran" with the wind, I might be able to make the road instead of hitting the trees. Of course, if I didn't make the road, I was going to have a fair amount of speed built up. Oh well. At about 100' off of the ground, it became obvious that I wasn't going quite make the road. I turned to face into the wind to slow down a bit and saw the woods drifting up under me. Great.

I narrowly missed going straight into a big tree, and instead started pinballing down through its outer branches. I had expected that it would be like falling out of a tree and plunging through the branches to the ground, but it was a much more slow motion kind of crash than that: since my parachute was still inflated above me, I got to deal with one branch at a time instead of falling through them all at once - so it was WHAP - pause - THWACK - pause - WHAP - pause, until my parachute finally caught on the top branches of the tree and deflated. I hung there, thirty or forty feet off of the ground, for maybe 5 or 10 seconds, and had just started considering how I was going to get down when a CRACK! from above me jarred me and dropped me a few feet. I had just enough time to look up and consider that maybe the ride wasn't over yet when, with another CRACK!, I dropped through the branches, breaking them as I went - this time, it was like falling out of a tree. Fortunately, the parachute caught again with my feet a few feet off the ground. I popped my rucksack loose and undid my chest and leg straps, wriggling out of the harness. I gave the parachute a few tentative tugs and decided I wasn't getting it out of the tree by myself - at least without a chainsaw or a bucket truck - so I broke a chemlight and tied it to the harness so I could find it later. I picked up my rucksack and weapon and started towards the road - I had only missed it by about 20'. I had planned to head down the road back to the DZ and find out what was going on, but once I got onto the road, my attention was drawn to the sound of struggling and cursing coming from the woods on the other side. I plunged into the woods towards the commotion.

A few feet into the woods, I found the team commander trying to get down. One of the things they teach you about tree landings is not to lower your equipment - under normal circumstances, you drop your rucksack and weapon carrier a few hundred feet off the ground - they're attached to an 18' long coiled nylon line, called a lowering line. The lowering line uncoils and your rucksack dangles underneath you for the rest of the ride. If you think you're going to hit the trees, you leave the ruck where it is for additional protection. If you've already lowered to ruck, you jettison it before you hit the trees, for reasons that will become obvious.

So there he was, struggling to get to the quick release on his lowering line, which, because he was folded up like a card table, was hung under his reserve. His parachute was hung in one tree, and his rucksack was hung in the other one. His rucksack was higher than his parachute, so he was doubled over and mostly upside down, trying to get his hand under his weapons carrier and reserve to get rid of the rucksack. He told me later he thought he was going to make the road and he didn't want to smash up his rucksack, so he rode it in.

Since he was the boss, I didn't laugh as hard as I might have - well, alright, I did. He snapped at me, "Hey, give me a hand here - if you can push up on me, I can probably get to the quick release."

Well, if our beloved leader had a fault, it was that he always wanted a picture whenever he did cool guy stuff - if we were fast-roping, or doing a live fire, or he was jumpmastering, he was constantly pestering people to get a picture of him - and he always carried a camera for the purpose. "Hey" I had to ask, "are you sure you don't want me to get a picture before you get down?" "No, dammit," he replied, then he started laughing, "besides, my camera is in my rucksack." After a few minutes, we got him down. I narrowly missed getting beaned by his rucksack when it let loose. We walked in, picking up a few stragglers on the road as we headed in. One of them was new to the team, and was bitching like mad: "I've got over seventy jumps with the 82nd, and never hit the trees once." he complained, "My first jump on a team . . ." "Yeah, well," one of the other guys interjected, "Welcome to Special Forces."

When we got back to the DZ, we found out what probably happened. The chopper pilot was flying with NVGs (night vision devices) and the light they were using to guide him in was a really big 5 D-Cell flashlight with an infrared filter on it. The pilot had a lot of trouble seeing it using the night vision goggles, so finally he agreed to try to spot it without the NVGs. The sergeant major took off the infrared cover off the flashlight and told the pilot, "You should see a white light. Do you have the white light?" The pilot said he did, and began another pass. He was off a little bit to the north, but still over the DZ, so the ground party lit the DZ's NATO L and cleared him to drop, figuring he would correct over the lights.

The new jumpmaster had trouble spotting the lights, and mistook the flanker light for the release point - so he was already way too far north. As soon as the pass started, the helicopter pilot - still following the white light that he thought was the ground party - turned north to follow the white headlight coming from the road at the far end of the DZ. The sergeant major was screaming "Abort, Abort!" over the radio, but it was too late. Some guys got banged up on the way down, but we only had one real injury - one of our guys had a compound fracture of his femur - bone sticking out of his leg. In one of those moves that happened in SF from time to time, and made me wonder what the hell I thought I was doing, hanging out among the Army's real men, he managed to rig up a splint to keep the bone from moving around, and made it about 100' out to the road so somebody could pick him up - and he brought his weapon out with him. When the medic on the drop zone got to him, he immediately asked if he wanted something for the pain. I'd have been screaming for morphine at that point, but this guy looks at him and says, "Well, yeah, it does hurt a bit. Do you have any Tylenol with you?"

All in all, a painful night, although we did get to go back and get some sleep instead of continuing the exercise. We spent the next day with tree spikes, trucks and chainsaws getting our parachutes mostly out of the trees, although in a couple of cases all that came back was the harness - short of cutting the tree down, the parachute wasn't coming out.

The experience did give us a team motto, though: "Never trust a jumpmaster in a monkey harness."

What is Justice -and for whom?

2005-04-28T11:01:00.000Z

There are a couple of recent military law cases that concern me a good bit. It worries me that the split-second, judgment calls men make in combat now seem to be subject to being second-guessed by others whose duty station is far behind the lines.

Ilario Pantano is in the middle of an Article 32 investigation (the military equivalent of a Grand Jury hearing) for shooting two Iraqis during a search for terrorists. And Capt. Rogelio Maynulet is being dismissed from the Army for killing a wounded Iraqi in what has been described as a "mercy killing." There are excellent accounts of both cases on the net, and I'm not going to rehash them here - My issue here is that I see these cases as symptomatic of a disturbing trend in military justice, and not as abberations.

I've seen a lot of commentary in the media and on the web from both supporters and detractors of the two men, and I find much to disagree with on both sides. I certainly don't endorse the position that some defenders of Pantano and Maynulet take when they argue that anything goes in war, that the people who were killed were the enemy, so screw them. There are rules in warfare - about not targeting civilians (which is not the same thing as not killing civilians - an important distinction the left is apparently incapable of understanding), and about caring for the wounded - even wounded enemies. I firmly believe that, even when, as is the case with the Iraqi insurgency, our enemy doesn't obey the law of land warfare, we should. The Geneva Convention is largely founded on a pragmatic, "quid pro quo" approach to minimizing unnecessary suffering in war (You don't shoot our civilian population, and we won't attack you wearing civilian clothes. You take care of our wounded and we'll take care of yours. And so on . . .) However, I think that the United States has a moral obligation to do the right thing, and to expect its soldiers to do the right thing, even when the enemy manifestly doesn't.

However, there's a huge difference between a deliberate or malicious act that deserves punishment, and a decision - made in good faith at the time - that turns out to, with the benefit of hindsight, to have been wrong.

My perception, and the perception of many serving soldiers that I've discussed this with, is that, in these cases, the military is bowing to pressure from the media and the left (that is, by the way, a distinction without a difference) and is trying to draw a bright and shining line that excludes any possible grey areas. By doing so, they're changing the relationship between the combat soldier and the military justice system - and doing so to the detriment of combat effectiveness.

There are always grey areas in combat. I understand the argument that mercy killing is a slippery slope, but the reality is that it happens in war - sometimes even to a comrade instead of an enemy. More than one medic from previous wars will - maybe only around men who understand, and after a few drinks - admit to an extra injection of morphine to end a suffering comrades life. More than one soldier has been shot to end his suffering. Is it the legal thing to do - no. Is it the moral thing to do - sometimes. Did Captain Maynulet deserve the benefit of the doubt instead of dismissal from the service. From everything that I've seen - yes.

And, in the case of Pantano, from what I've seen reported so far, the Iraqis could have been bad guys. That doesn't give him the right to execute them, if they've surrendered, but it does give him the absolute right to kill them if he perceives a threat from them. (And, the insurgents don't always "bear arms openly." A hidden grenade, or a remotely detonated bomb in the SUV, could have killed Pantano and his men that day. The fact that one wasn't found makes the event a misjudgment, perhaps even tragic, but not criminal.) A uniformed enemy doesn't cease to be a valid target because he's running away - and it's simply wrong to extend that protection to insurgents.

The Pantano case is made worse by how it was brought - a disgruntled junior NCO, whose performance in combat, by all accounts, indicated that he should not have been an NCO in the first place.

My concern is not only for the injustice being done these men, but also for the effect it has on other soldiers still in combat. The message that is being sent is to them is this: "Your actions, your split second decisions, are subject to being picked apart and second-guessed by people who aren't scared and dirty and tired, with the benefit of perfect hindsight of reflection, with all the Predator feeds, radio traffic, personnel records and everything else you didn't have with you. God help you if you get even one of them wrong. God help you if one of them even looks wrong in the New York Times."

One of our most famous jurists once observed, "Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife." But it seems that we're now demanding just that from our warriors in the heat of battle. Will it get to the point that every infantry squad will require a JAG lawyer assigned to it, to rule on legality of every move? Maybe in both the Maynulet and Pantano decisions were mistakes, but do they really rise to the level of crimes? Is that the message we want to be sending our troops?

Now, please understand, I'm not advocating an "anything goes" view of combat. There are clear delineations of right and wrong. I don't think that a deliberate massacre, or the calculated execution of prisoners, should ever be tolerated. But that's not what happened here. What happened here was combat, and judgment calls made in combat for the right reasons - just because the outcome isn't what we would have hoped is no reason to turn those judgment calls into indictments.

Back in the Reagan presidency, JTF-6 was the task force that assisted civil authorities with drug interdiction along the border. The military couldn't actually search for or arrest smugglers, but we could provide surveillance and alert the authorities if we saw anything. It was good training for us for our real-world mission - what is now known as strategic reconaissance, but was called SIGTA at the time - strategic intelligence gathering and target acquisition. Thanks to the Army's affectation of the southern drawl, it got pronounced sikta, and was reputed to stand for "sitting in communist territory again."

I remember, many years ago, doing a JTF-6 mission. As part of the preparation for the mission, we got a RoE (rules of engagement) brief from the JTF-6 JAG officer, a Marine lieutenant colonel. (The JAG is the Judge Advocate General's office, for all intents, the military's law firm.) Our RoE was basically that we could protect ourselves or others, but we weren't there to arrest anybody. At some point in the briefing, the possibility of involvement with state law came up. What if somebody got shot out there - would we find ourselves in state court? No way, the JAG officer told us - he explained that, as military members, we were considered federal employees acting under the scope of our employment, and that the Army would refuse to give state courts jurisdiction if something happened.

Right after he left, our own JAG officer jumped up, clearly agitated, and gave us his interpretation. He told us something a little different than the Marine JAG officer said. Yes, he agreed, the Department of Defense could deny the state jurisdiction. But his take was that, if something went wrong, we'd be pretty much on our own. "Don't think for a second," he said, "that the Army won't throw you under the bus if they need to to take the heat off. You might be in the right," he continued, "but if you embarrass big Army, they'll cut you away like a screaming bag-lock."

At the time, I thought he was being overly cynical. Some time after that, though, well after our rotation was over, a Marine Lance Corporal stood trial, in state court, on charges of killing an illegal immigrant. The Marine thought that his life, and the lives of his fellow Marines, were in jeopardy. He was ultimately aquitted, but the DoD "threw him under the bus" by allowing him to be tried in state court in the first place.

At the time, I thought it was an anomaly. Now, though, it looks like standard operating procedure. From where I stand, the "crimes" of both Pantano and Maynulet were all about embarrassing the military and not about right and wrong.

I don't know what the right answer is - how we make the point that killing civilians is wrong, and that killing wounded prisoners is wrong, and still recognize that sometimes there are exceptions - that sometimes those things will happen for the right reasons. I do know, though, that what has happened in these two cases isn't it.

Whatever you do, do it with style

2005-04-26T15:41:00.000Z

Like most people, I admire exceptional achievement - the Olympic athlete, the world-renowned composer, the prize-winning novelist. Only a few people manage the to combine dedication and drive with the gift of innate talent to produce truly spectacular results, and I respect that. I even respect it when the achievement isn't one that might meet universal social approval.

A little background might be in order here. The main base and headquarters for US and coalition forces is Bagram Airfield,a bit less than an hour to the north of Kabul. When I was there, Bagram consisted of the airfield proper, with supporting hangers, buildings, fuel tanks and whatnot, and a cantonment area where most of the troops lived and worked. The cantonment area was a long narrow area laid out to the rear of the airfield, paralleling the airstrip. There were a few permananent buildings built of cheap concrete that were left over from the days when it was a Soviet airbase, and a few more permanent buildings that the US had constructed (the Bagram PX, for instance, seemed to be fairly well built), but most of the buildings there were either temporary construction - plywood and 2x4 shacks - or tents.

The main road through the cantonment portion of Bagram ran parallel to the airstrip as well, and the cantonment buildings (and tents) were off to either side of it. This road was Disney Drive, named after one of our fallen heroes, Jason Disney (and not, as I thought the first time I heard it, a reference to the Mickey Mouse nature of Bagram.) It ran several miles down the length of Bagram and was paved. Portions of it even had a sidewalk.

Being in a war zone didn't (and shouldn't) excuse the units stationed on Bagram from staying in shape, and most units assigned there ran organized PT (physical training) in the mornings. In the Army, unit PT usually consists of stretches and calesthenics followed by a run. Since Disney Drive was the only long straight paved surface except the airfield, that was the normal "running track." In the morning, hundreds to thousands of soldiers took to Disney Drive in formation for their daily jog.

Disney was a well traveled road and for safety reasons, it was closed to vehicular traffic for an hour in the mornings to keep the running formations from having to dodge the assortment of cargo trucks, military vehicles and Land Rovers that normally traversed it. MPs were stationed at the major crossroads coming off the airfield to enforce the ban. There were always a few vehicles on Disney during the restricted hour, either because they had special permission to violate the ban (missions, for example, took priority - if you had to move to the airfield during that period, you could get a special pass), or because they were driven by people who had just gotten to Bagram and didn't know about the ban: it was possible to pull out of a parking lot or small road without an MP barrier, but the MPs pretty quickly flagged these vehicles down and directed them off of the road.

No military unit operates completely independently. All units require support from other units for food or fuel or transportation or other assistance. That was true of us in Afghanistan, and we had people supporting us who's job it was to coordinate with other units or functions to get things done for us. That job is known as LNO (it stands for liasion officer, I think.) Early in the rotation, soldiers out of support company either got LNO as an additional duty, or in some cases, if the coordination workload was high enough, got assigned as a full-time LNO. At Bagram, that wasn't a good or a bad thing - you were still on Bagram - but some people really got over by drawing LNO duty. We had a steady stream of soldiers and equipment going to and from the States to Bagram all the way through the deployment. Some soldiers were in military schools or otherwise undeployable at the beginning of the rotation, so they joined us later. Some soldiers got hurt, went to Germany or the US for treatment, and were able to return to duty. Some soldiers got the dreaded red cross message, and had to return home, either on leave or permanently. Equipment broke and had to be returned to the States for repair. Repaired or backordered equipment had to be shipped to us via Bagram.

So, like every other major unit in theater, the CJSOTF had rear echelon LNOs. SF guys didn't draw LNO duty - they were earmarked for fighting the war - but there were a number of support personnel assigned to the CJSOTF (cooks, clerks, truckdrivers, repair people, and the like) to choose from for the job. One of the LNOs was located at Fort Bragg, and there were two at Rhein-Main Air Force Base just outside of Frankfurt. The Frankfurt LNO position was particularly nice - the work wasn't terribly onerous (it mostly consisted of figuring out Air Force flight schedules - not particularly easy to do - and meeting people and equipment to make sure they got off and on the right airplanes. Frankfurt was almost always the midway stop for people and equipment, and scheduling could be tricky, since onward travel to Bagram could be direct, or through one or more airbases in central asia or the middle east. Figuring out that the best way to get a person or a box to Bagram was through Kuwait /Qatar/Manas required some knowledge of the arcana of the Air Mobility Command's scheduling system.) The job required some expertise and knowledge, but long hours weren't part of the deal.

Also, Rhein-Main was the hub for everything moving to Afghanistan and Iraq, and it was full-up. No room at all for transient LNOs, so they were living on the economy, drawing full per diem - which, in Frankfurt, was substantial.

And the job was substantially unsupervised - the senior LNO was a Staff Sergeant, and his boss was in Baghram. No formations, no oversight, no scheduled hours - just keep the supply line moving and be available by cell phone. And, unlike Afghanistan, there was no regulation against consumption of alcoholic beverages.

So, the Frankfurt LNOs had it made compared to living in Baghram - and, better still, they all found an excuse to accompany a shipment to Baghram every so often, so they drew combat pay and the tax exemption for the month - and they got their combat patch out of the deal.

Unfortunately, the abundance of free time and the lack of supervision led one of the pair to screw up spectacularly. He got pulled over by Die Polizei, very late at night, for driving erratically - and of course the reason he was driving erratically was that he was drunk off his ass, on his way back from a club in Frankfurt. That was bad enough - both the Germans and the US Army are death on DUI - but the car he was driving was the BMW that the Army had rented for him to get around in. In the view of the Army's lawyers, this made it a military vehicle.

Of course, the CJSOTF reaction to this was immediate - get him out of Europe and back to Baghram. He would certainly face an Article 15 (a non-judicial punishment that can include fines, extra duty or detention), if not court martial, but the first step was to get him out of Frankfurt before he embarrassed the CJSOTF further. And that's where he passed from being a run-of-the-mill miscreant to being a legend. He got there in the afternoon and after the requisite chewing out, was assigned to a tent.

With punishment for the Germany incident still up in the air, most people would have tried to maintain a low profile and stay out of trouble. Not our hero, though. I happened to be on Baghram dealing with money the day after he arrived.

I went in to talk to the finance officer, and she filled me in on the latest gossip. "Did you hear about Sergeant ________?" I didn't even know who he was, so she told me about him arriving in Baghram the day before after getting yanked out of Germany in disgrace. "Yeah," I agreed, "He's screwed himself pretty bad right now." "No, that's not the big thing." she replied. "He got a DUI this morning on Disney Drive." I asked, "How do you get a DUI on Disney Drive?"

It turned out that, the day he arrived on Baghram, our hero conned somebody out of a vehicle, found a supply of booze, picked up a girl from another unit, and spent the night in a drunken dalliance with her. When they woke up the next morning, the girl was horrified - she was late for PT. "No problem," Sir Galahad told her, "I'll drive you over to the PT formation." It was, after all, the least he could do for her.

So, still a bit woozy from the night before, and both throwing on clothes as they went, the two of them set out for the PT formation. Unfortunately for our boy, the PT formation was on the other side of Disney Drive. It may have been the challenge of trying to dress and drive at the same time, or it may have been the effects of the alcohol lingering in his system, but he failed to notice the MP checkpoint closing Disney Drive to vehicular traffic. He came to a stop only after the MPs had dodged out of the way and he hit the traffic sawhorse. The female leapt out of the vehicle and made a run for it, still holding on to the rest of her PT uniform - the MP's, too stunned to intervene, let her go, but grabbed him. Even after some recovery time, he still had enough alcohol in his system to be DUI. Searching the vehicle, they found bottles, some empty and some still full, and some girlie magazines. The girl eventually got busted, too, of course: it was easy enough to find the only female soldier who had missed PT.

Now, our hero was really in trouble at this point - there's a regulation in Afghanistan, known as General Order Number One, that prescribes the conduct of deployed troops: No possession of alcohol, no drinking at all, no pornography, no extramarital sex. About the only part of General Order #1 he didn't touch on was the one that prohibited proselytizing the natives - although, I'm sure that, after everything else, given time, he would have found religion and hit this one too.

But I'll admit that I was seriously impressed by this guy's ability to get into trouble. I'd always suspected that it was possible to procure alcoholic beverages there, but I would have thought it would take a few weeks to figure out the supply line and would take the ability to drive to Kabul to actually buy them. (I'm just saying . . .) And, the ratio of men to women on Baghram was about 9 to 1. Being able to pick up a woman at all was an impressive feat, much less picking one up the first night there.

OK, yeah, no doubt that he screwed up - but you have to admire the man: when he did screw up, he screwed up big. Lots of people got into trouble over there in one way or another, but usually over small things. This guy, on the other hand, became a legend: "Well, at least I didn't get a DUI on Disney Drive" became the battle cry of anyone getting chewed out for anything. And, if he ever has children and they ask him the question "What did you do in the war on terror, daddy?" he can proudly reply: "Son, I was the only man in the war to ever get a DUI on Disney Drive -and I did it with my pants off."

And the worst retailer in the world is . . .

2005-04-25T15:42:00.000Z

Nothing to do with the military or Afghanistan here - just a reaction to another blog entry that reminded me of one of my own worst shopping experiences.

I used to shop at Best Buy a lot, but I don't anymore, and I wouldn't if they were giving away a free top-end laptop with every box of blank CD-Rs they sell. It's not something I think about a lot, it's just a fact of my existence. The only time it comes up is when people ask for my help doing something with their home electronics. Because I'm a computer geek, I'll end up helping someone out with a home network, or upgrading a PC, or hooking up a stereo system from time to time, and sometimes the people I'm helping will suggest buying parts or software from Best Buy. Invariably, I steer them to CompUSA or Staples or Fry's to buy whatever it is they need. (By the way, I have nothing but good things to say about Fry's, except that they need to put a store closer to my house.) Since I'm a "computer expert", people I know take my advice when I tell them that Best Buy has terrible customer service and to take their business elsewhere.

Just in the last few weeks, though, a couple of Best Buy customer service horror stories have popped up on the web that reminded me of why I don't shop there anymore. Best Buy recently had one man arrested for trying to pay with $2 bills (he was pissed with them for first telling him they would cover installation of his car stereo, since they had screwed something up, and then later calling him at home and threatening to have him arrested unless he came in an paid his installation - he did come in to pay, and they had him arrested anyway.) Just this morning, I read Geek with a .45's account of his own run-in with Best Buy's unique brand of customer relations.

From his account, it's obvious that Best Buy still subscribes to the psychopathic homeless bum school of customer service. And, just like a homeless person screaming at you and pissing on your shoes, the natural reaction to any interaction with Best Buy management is to want to hit someone (please don't misunderstand me - I don't mean to imply that dealing with Best Buy is anywhere near as pleasant as having a psychotic wingnut screaming at you because you won't pay him to wash your windshield.) As a civilized society, we have evolved a web of social and legal obligation that allow us to interact pleasantly and appropriately with each other. An unfortunate side-effect of that web of obligations is that there really isn't an appropropriate response to a sociopath following you around and screaming obscenities - or to the customer abuse that appears to be corporate policy at Best Buy. And Best Buy takes advantage of that, in spades . . .

I can only imagine that Best Buy has looked at the cost of customer retention in light of its policies, and simply decided that keeping customers satisfied is a low priority for them. The thinking in Best Buy corporate offices must be: "If our sales, or data mining, or loss prevention policies, alienate our customers, we can always just run a sale and attract new ones, right? And, just because they handle cash every day for a living, why should we expect our managers to know that the $2 bill is legal tender, hmm?"

My own break with Best Buy happened one afternoon when I had gone to pick up some software and parts for a project I was working on. I found what I needed, and picked up a couple of DVDs I had been looking for, checked out and started to leave. As I was walking out, something triggered the anti-theft alarm. The assistant manager type (fat, bad skin, short hair but overdue for a haircut, khaki pants that needed pressing, and a Best Buy polo shirt) at the door called me over: "Excuse me sir, I need to take a look at your receipt."

Actually, he needed to do more than that - what we did was, we emptied my bags out and went through each item on the receipt and matched it up with what I had bought. OK, it was annoying - especially since the cryptic abbreviations on the tape make it hard to figure out what some of the items were - but it didn't bother me too much. I knew that loss prevention is a big deal in retail, and there's always a lot of money walking out of stores all the time, so I was irritated at the waste of time, but basically OK with things up to that point, and still being polite. It's what happened next that convinced me that Best Buy could give a rat's ass about their customers, and also convinced me to shop elsewhere from that point on.

After we had finished reconciling the receipt with the purchases, the guy at the door said "Hey, it looks like one of the DVDs must not have gotten deactivated. You'll have to go back to the cashier and get her to run it through again." I looked back at the cashier, and at the line of three or four people waiting to check out, and told Mr. Assistant Security Manager guy , "Hey, we just went through all my stuff. Why do I need to have the things deactivated?" "I'm sorry sir", he told me,"It's Best Buy policy that all security devices have to be deactivated before you leave the store." "And you can't just do that here?" "No," he replied, "our policy is that security devices have to be deactivated by the cashier."

It occured to me that, if I had to go back and get all the security devices deactivated anyway, we could have done without the little cash register receipt audit I had just gone through - unless he really thought I had dropped a few extra goodies in my bag as well as shoplifting a DVD or two. Of course, I should have told him to screw off and walked out right then, but like the docile little consumer I am, I repacked my bags (without Mr. Security Manager's help, by the way) and walked back over to the twelve year old or so cashier I had just bought everything from. "Excuse me." I said,gesturing with one of my Best Buy bags. "The guy over there says I need to have the security devices in here deactivated." The cashier glared at me: Excuse me, sir", she said snippily. "I have a line here. You can go to customer service if you need to." I looked across the front of the store at the customer service desk - they had a longer line over there than the cashier had. Now I knew that I was being screwed. I'd already spent more than 15 minutes with Mr. Security Guy going through my bag and trying to figure out what the part number for a memory stick was. Now I was supposed to stand in the cashier's line again, just to meet with Best Buy's internal policy about deactivating a security device that she should have deactivated the first time around.

I should have said "I don't think so", and walked out of the store. Or I could have said "Yes, I see you have a line - I've already stood in it once to purchase these items." But, of course, what I did, was to say nothing. I got back in line - after another ten plus minutes, I finally got back to the cashier. "Now, what can I do for you, sir?" she says, with an artificial retail smile. "Bitch" I thought, but didn't say, even though I'm seething by this time. I also considered telling her that I needed a refund on all these items, but since that would have cost me even more time than Best Buy has already wasted in the middle of a busy day, I discarded that option, too. Instead, I explained, nicely, that I needed to have the security devices deactivated so I can get out the door. "Oh, no problem." she tells me, running the DVDs back over the magnetic whateveritis until they dong. "No problem for you" I thought to myself, "I had to wait for the security guy to go through everything I bought, whether or not it had a security device, and match it my receipt. Then I had to wait in line a second time so you could do what you should have done the first time. And, if you had done it the first time, I wouldn't have gotten jacked up on my way out the door." But, of course, being the gentleman (sheep) that I am, I said "Thank you." She, at least, put the stuff back in the bag when she was done.

I collected my bags, started out of the store, and nodded at Mr. Assistant Security Manager, fuming all the while. As I started out the door, the security alarm went off again. "Screw this," I thought to myself, and kept walking. I heard Mr. Security Guy saying, "Excuse me, sir," and I decided that there was no way that I was going through this crap one more time. So I kept walking, not looking back. The guy repeated "Excuse me" and I heard him coming out from behind his little desk / cubicle station at the door, and now I was well and truly pissed. At that point, if he had grabbed me, it would not have been be pretty. (I suspect that he would have slipped and fallen hard to the pavement behind me as I continued walking to my car.) Apparently, he decided the same thing, because as I continued to ignore him and walked briskly into the parking lot, with one last "Sir, Excuse me, SIR!" he gave up and retreated into the store.

And that was the last time I've been in a Best Buy.

A couple more snakeaters for the blogroll

2005-04-23T03:47:00.000Z

Found a couple more SF guys with blogs - this is way cool. Before long, we're going to need a SOFBlog ring.

jbrookins was in the 'Stan, literally in some of the same places I was. He's got a great shot of the Logar pass on his website - if I recognize it correctly, it's heading down on the Kabul side pretty much right after the checkpoint at the top of the pass? Also a great picture of Gardez and Orgun-e. Been there, too . . . Maybe I need to figure out how to post pictures on here, if anyone wants to see? Anyway, his blog, JB's Sanctuary, is a great read.

snakeater was in, too, back in the day - plus he likes baseball. He was at Ft. Devens, and I imagine if I dig back through his archives, I'll find a story or two about the Wagon Wheel . . . Check out his blog, Mistakes Were Made.

Since I'm redoing the template, I'm also moving Blackfive into the SOF list, where he belongs . . .

Welcome to your new home, neighbors

2005-04-22T21:17:00.000Z

Dan, Jack and I had gone up to Asadabad to "help out" with some operations near the Paki border. Coming up from our A-camp, where an A-team and a few support personnel were the only Americans living with some Afghan security guards we hired and about a company and a half of the Afghan National Army, A'bad was a pleasant surprise. This was a by-God firebase, with a battalion or so of the 10th Mountain, a Special Forces ODB and five or so A-teams, a FAST (forward area surgical team - kind of a baby MASH), a battery of 120mm mortars, some other, more specialized units, and a lot of supporting personnel. After the A-camp, it was incredibly luxurious - both the 10th Mountain and the SF unit there ran a mess-hall, and both of them had hot showers!

In Asadabad, I did figure out exactly what people mean when they say the Army is like a family: just like growing up with sisters, living with hundreds of soldiers meant that you had to time your showers carefully. Fortunately the 10th Mountain was running a tight ship. They'd get up early, shower and shave before breakfast, and then be off working or training for the rest of the day. That was fine with us, since we could fit our showers in after breakfast - no lines, no waiting, and not enough hot water for a battalion of soldiers was more than enough hot water for three SF'ers. And, best of all, the showers were actually indoors. It was a welcome change from trying to stay out of the wind by huddling behind a plywood partition, while showering in a tepid trickle from a solar shower - and usually running out of water before running out of dirt.

The toilets weren't any better than we had at our A-camp, but there were more of them - plastic Port-a-Pottys, wooden outhouses, and a row of traditional Afghan squat crappers that had been remodeled with the addition of a plywood box over the hole with an appropriate seat bolted to it.

The only problem we had was with the neighbors to our rear . . .

As soon as we got off of the chopper, we let the ODB sergeant major know we'd arrived. He gave us a rundown on who was there, what was supposed to be going on, what to do if the firebase were attacked, and even threw in a quick tour of the camp (taking care to point out the showers and mess halls - I suppose he could guess what sort of place we'd come from), and then told us he ran a nightly brief at 1930 hours, and one of us should show up so we'd know what was going on.

We found ourselves sleeping in the old aid-station tent. It had become too small for the camp's medical team, and they had moved to more expansive headquarters, but it made a perfect transient quarters, with a plywwod floor and walls, and a diesel stove for warmth. Plus it had plywood counters and a plywood desk, so we felt like we had it made. Plenty of room for us, our gear, and for some specialized equipment we'd brought with us. And it had a hesco wall behind it and in front of it, so unless a bad guy dropped a round right on our tent, we were pretty safe.

We were still getting oriented and set up - and still recovering from the after effects of second helpings at the surprisingly good 10th Mountain messhall, and from the first hot showers we'd had in two months - and it was coming up on 1930. Jack and I were trying to get our equipment ready and get comms with the rest of our team set up, so Dan went over to take the brief. He came back, pretty disgruntled, at about 2100. After I'd been to one too, I figured out the problem with the nightly briefing: it was pretty much the same problem I'd seen in attending departmental meetings in the civilian world. Anything that was of interest to anyone came up at the meeting, whether everybody needed to be involved or not. As a result, Dan had just gone through ninety minutes to give us a sixty second briefing on what we actually needed to know, and wasn't particularly happy about it.

After he finished putting the word out, we dropped by the chow-hall for an evening coffee and snack (no, really, you could drop by and get coffee and munchies anytime - it was like having a poor soldier's Starbucks down the street), and then went back to our new home and slipped into our sleeping bags, and drifted off to sleep . . . no guard duty, no radio watch, no duty in the morning. There was nothing to keep us from getting a solid eight or more hours of sleep for the first time in a long while.

KA-BWHOOOM! In the middle of the night, an explosion rocked the tent. Whatever it was, it had gone off right behind us. I jerked awake, yelling "Holy fucking shit!" Of course, as a trained and combat hardened green beret, I reacted calmly and professionally to the sudden crisis. Thanks to my unerring instincts, I knew that I needed to get out of the sleeping bag, get off the cot and on the floor, grab my body armor and helmet and get them on, get my boots on, grab my weapon, check on everybody else, and assess the situation. The only problem was that I tried to do them all at once - I rolled out of bed, still in the sleeping bag, and whacked against the floor, feeling around for my headlamp and body armour. "What the fuck was that?" My only consolation was that Jack's reaction was, if possible, even less graceful than mine was. From the sounds in the cot next to mine, somebody had thrown an alley cat into Jack's sleeping bag with him, and one of them was going to come out. He was desperately trying to get the quick-release zipper on his sleeping bag to function under high stress and it just wasn't working out for him.

Dan, on the other hand, was strangely calm about the whole thing. His headlamp snapped on from the head of his bunk just as a second explosion went off, again from right behind us. "Oh yeah," he said, lifting his head up from the pillow and opening one eye, "One more thing I needed to tell you from the briefing tonight. The 120mm mortars have a middle of the night fire mission - they should start firing at 0320." I let go of my helmet and hit the light on my watch - the mortars were right on time.

I also found out the hard way that they were right behind us. Dan didn't seem to have any trouble dropping back off to sleep, but oddly enough, it took me and Jack a while longer before we could relax.

A few more random comments, and then back to the blog . . .

2005-04-21T17:03:00.000Z

In my last post, I mentioned, in passing, my misgivings about the military's transformation in general, and the Stryker brigades in particular. There were a couple of interesting comments that got made in response, and I wanted to take a few minutes and discuss them a bit (I'll get back to the war stories in a second, I promise.)

Uncle Jimbo points out that we have many other options to fight tanks other than going head to head with them. He mentions our air superiority, UAVs, and smart munitions - and there are other options he doesn't go into, on top of that.

Tim Thumb notes -and he's correct, although I think the reasons are more systemic than he suggests - that the US has only a fraction of the manufacturing base that it had during WWII, and would thus be incapable of mounting an industrial campaign as it did in the Second World War.

To Tim's point, I think that it's pretty clear that the United States is now a post-industrial economy, and if we are going to maintain a distinct military advantage, it will be based on superior technology, and superior integration of technology with the war-fighting process (not the same thing, by the way.) We couldn't, even if we wanted to, win a future war through superior production of roughly equivalent products or even vastly superior production of inferior products (say, the Sherman vs. the Tiger.)

One of the primary reasons we were able to win the Second World War was that the military recognized, in the 1930s, the importance of our industrial advantage and took steps to prepare to use it if necessary (for example, through the creation of the Army Industrial War College.) While nothing that unified and formal has been done today (that I'm aware of), Rumsfeld's vision about transformation is based on the potential of technology overcoming mass - and the services are working on it apace. Smart munitions are a terrific example of that - the bombing philosophy of WWII was based on mass - "round the clock" bombing, "bombing waves", and so on. Today, a handful of JDAMs launched from a single aircraft can accomplish, through precision, the same effect that an entire bomber wing from the Second World War might have had - and with much less collateral damage.

On the other hand, relying on technology instead of industrial superiority carries with it a distinct risk: the barriers to replicating a technological success are much smaller than they are to creating an industrial base. I think we see that in the relative speed with which intellectual outsourcing took place in the software industry versus the relatively slow pace of outsourcing of our industrial base. You can, in retrospect, track the history of industrial outsourcing over a forty year plus period - from the sixties until now - before it became a significant issue. In the software industry, it happened in a matter of a few years. It can be argued that part of that difference is because the model for outsourcing already existed, but I think what's more important is that technology requires a much smaller capital outlay, and enabling components can typically be bought off the shelf. The only other requirement for high technology is a smart, educated workforce. Smart people occur in roughly the same distribution worldwide, and technical education isn't that hard for a country to provide (either through building a system like India, or simply sending the best and brightest to the US for training, like China.)

Right now, the US has a distinct and probably insurmountable technological advantage in war-fighting over the rest of the world. My concern is that that advantage might not exist, or might not exist to the degree it does now, in 2020 or 2025, and we should be prepared for that. Our potential adversaries have seen the incredible advantage that our technology confers on our war-fighting capability, and you can be sure they're working to incorporate that advantage into their own equipment and doctrine. And, while developing technology might be hard, duplicating it becomes relatively simple. The US may classify a specific weapons system, but the underlying and enabling technologies are usually widely available and shared in technical journals, papers, and the Internet. In 1980, a cruise missile was an incredible technological undertaking - today, using off the shelf parts (an embedded computer, a GPS receiver, some servos, and some piping) you could build one cheaply and easily (although I'd advise against it, by the way. Putting a guidance system on a rocket is illegal in the US, unless you're the government, or they say it's OK.) We'll probably always be one or two generations ahead, but if we de-emphasize all the other elements of weapons design, I think it will eventually mean trouble - for example, creating a relatively lightly armoured, wheeled vehicle and thinking of it as a tank. It would be one thing for a Stryker brigade to go up against a heavy tank force based on the paradigm of an industrial army - as Uncle Jimbo points out, with out advantages in air power, sensors, smart munitions, and network-centric warfare, we'd clean their clocks. But it will be another thing for a Stryker force with access to, say, third generation "transformational" sensor and C4I technology to go up against a heavy tank force with first gen technology of the same sort.

For instance, let's say, as in Uncle Jimbo's example, we field smart munitions with pattern recognition technology capable of loitering over the battlefield and killing threat tanks as they maneuver to engage. That represents a huge advantage conferred by technology. But let's take it further - given the current state of the art, it's not impossible to imagine a threat buying an off-the-shelf doppler radar, combining it with a minigun mounted on a high speed motorized gimbal, and bolting the whole thing to the back deck of a tank. Instant, relatively cheap, Aegis system for the bad guy's tanks, and a huge technological advantage negated.

And while we lead the world in UAVs right now, I think that we have more to fear from them than we realize. Right now, we can pretty much be assured of establishing air supremacy within a few days of hostilities starting in pretty much any situation we might find ourselves in. In fact, the Army doesn't even have a doctrine for fighting a war without the ability to at least establish local air superiority. UAVs are cheap and relatively easy to build - in many cases, they're not much more than an oversized model airplane. "Smartness," in the sense of sensors and the ability to filter and act on sensor data, is a pretty straightforward computer science project these days, as well. A country like China may not be able to match us fighter for fighter, but how hard will it be for them to create UAV "swarms" that overwhelm our fighter and air defense capabilities?

And sometimes technological advantage can be negated through extremely low-tech means, as we've learned in training and in Kosovo.

I would agree with Uncle Jimbo that tanks aren't necessarily needed to fight tanks. On the other hand, I don't want to sound like a 1980s submariner after a few drinks talking about the obsolescence of the aircraft carrier. If you need heavy armor, especially in an urban environment where a lot of sensor capabilities may be degraded, you need heavy armor. In short, I think that technological transformation is an essential component of maintaining and enhancing our warfighting edge - but I don't think it's a good idea for us to end up with a force that is, weapon for weapon, inferior except for technological edge.

And the correct answer is . . .

2005-04-20T15:18:00.000Z

Who knows - that's what makes military history interesting: Everybody approaches it with a different viewpoint.

A lot of support for Kursk and the Normandy breakout as the pivotal moments in the European theater. That was pretty much where most of the people I was talking this over came down as well (although at least one felt like D-Day was the important battle on the Western Front - his take was that the Normandy breakout was a given once the beachheads were secure.) But I was talking to a bunch of ground-pounders, of course.

I felt like a class traitor for thinking this way, but I took the position that the key campaign in the European theater was the Battle of the Atlantic, and that the inflection point in the war was Donitz's May 43 withdrawl of subs from the Northern Atlantic. Even though we still took some shipping and escort losses after that, the security of the supply lines from North America to England (and to the Soviets via Archangel and Murmansk) was never in doubt after that point.

Once our logistical pipeline was assured, Germany was caught between Russian manpower reserves and the industrial base of the United States. Even if Hitler hadn't interfered with the German Army's conduct of the war, I don't think there was anything that they could have done (short of developing atomic weapons before we did) to have won the thing. (By the way, Big D, I'm going to have to read Black May - thanks for letting me know about it.)

I've always agreed with the conventional wisdom about Midway, by the way - if you make the reasonable assumption that taking Midway would have led to the fall of Hawaii (or,at least made it untenable as a base for the Pacific fleet), it would have allowed the Japanese to cut our supply lines to SE Asia and Australia, and, worse, would have gone a long way towards securing their supply lines (how much less effective would our submarine campaign against Japanese merchant shipping have been if the submarines had to base out of San Diego or San Francisco?) That, in turn, could have allowed them - in addition to the immense strategic advantage Hawaii would give them - to, if not keep pace with US ship-building, at least do a much better job of matching our numbers. As it was, Midway closed out the Japanese offensive on the short side of Yamamoto's prediction.

I did think that Code Wizard's and MKL's suggestion that the Allied codebreaking effort represented the tipping point was a good one. I finished a book recently (Codebreakers' Victory: How the Allied Cryptographers Won World War II, by Hervie Haufler) that makes a very good case for that point of view.

I also thought that Major Mike's point about Tarawa was interesting. It's interesting to speculate how our tactics and strategy might have changed if it had turned out to be a disaster.

Thanks everybody, for the fascinating discussion.

DIGRESSION:
But then, I always tend to think that logistics trumps pretty much everything else, at least in the long run. That's the rationale behind the Stryker brigades today - trading some top end combat capability for quickness of deployment and depth of logistical support. I see Stryker as an intermediate force between quick reaction forces (like the Marines or Army Airborne) and heavy combat follow-on echelons. The lesson of Gulf War I was pretty clear - it took too long to get a credible combat force on the ground after we deployed the 82nd. There was a period of several months where we were sitting there with our butt's flapping in the breeze - had the Republican Guard come screaming towards Riyadh, we would have been in a world of hurt. (We might have one anyway - even though it would have been light infantry vs. heavy armor, I imagine that the Marines and 82nd would have given a good account (the morale is to the material as . . .) and our airpower might have turned the tide. No doubt, though, that it would have been extremely bloody.

So, given that we're no longer sure where the bad guys will attack (see Fulda Gap) and we can't depend on prepositioned heavy forces, Stryker is a good idea. The thing that concerns me is, as a computer / systems geek who's heard this kind of talk about transformation before, that I don't believe some of the hype about Stryker being able to go up against heavy conventional forces because of sensor integration, network-centric warfare, technology advantage, and the like. If we ever have to fight a determined nation-state with a significant industrial base (say, China, just for instance) we neglect our ability to project heavy armored forces at our peril. That's the core of my concern about Stryker - if it comes to be seen as a substitute for armor, instead of a intermediate force positioned between light and heavy.

Soldier, it's time to soldier

2005-04-19T16:43:00.000Z

Warning: Intemperate language follows:

I was going through my blog list while eating lunch today, and I found this post concerning the IRR in the Mudville Gazette's open links forum. The author equates activation of IRR soldiers beyond their originally scheduled ETS (Expiration Term of Service - the day you're out of the military) date with a new draft. The first comment to the article refers to it as an "injustice." And Paul Conner, of DefenseWatch, weighs in with an article discussing the "drafting" of Sgt. Emiliano Santiago, who's ETS date was adjusted so that he could deploy to Afghanistan with his Oregon National Guard unit. Paul Conner notes that the 9th Circuit refused to grant relief to Sgt. Santiago, thus requiring him to deploy as scheduled. Mr. Conner feels that this decision represents "egregious violations of contractual terms and conditions."

Well, bullshit - these people are simply wrong. Getting tapped on the way out the door for combat service may be a flaming pain in the ass, but it's not an injustice, and it's not a draft. And it certainly doesn't violate the terms of the voluntary enlistment contract.

When you initially sign up, you sign up for an obligated period of service of eight years. For part of that eight years, you may sign up for an active duty obligation (two, three, four or six years, depending on the specialty, the branch of service, and the benefits you get.) You may choose to go directly into the reserves or guard, and have a six year initial drilling obligation. Either way, you're in the military for the whole eight years. If you complete your active duty or organized reserve obligation, and you choose not to re-enlist, you don't get out. You're transferred to the IRR (the individual ready reserve) for the remainder of your eight year commitment - you don't have to show up for work, and you don't get paid, but you're still in the military. You're not out until the eight years is up.

And, like anyone else in the military, you're subject to involuntary extension in a time of war or national emergency, for the duration plus six months. That rule extends back before we got into the Second World War, so it's not like its been sprung on us suddenly during the GWOT. It's embedded in the US code (Title 10 USC 671(a)):

Members: service extension during war

Unless terminated at an earlier date by the Secretary concerned, the period of active service of any member of an armed force is extended for the duration of any war in which the United States may be engaged and for six months thereafter."

And it's not like service members don't know this going in. Enlistees, who have to meet minimum education and intelligence requirements, and who can thus be presumed to be able to read and understand their enlistment contract, have all this explained to them in the document - and not tucked away in some small font size addendum either. The enlistment contract clearly spells out, in about 14 point type:

10. MILITARY SERVICE OBLIGATION FOR ALL MEMBERS OF THE ACTIVE AND RESERVE COMPONENTS, INCLUDING THE NATIONAL GUARD.

a. FOR ALL ENLISTEES: If this is my initial enlistment, I must serve a total of eight (8) years. Any part of that service not served on active duty must be served in a Reserve Component unless I am sooner discharged.

b. If I am a member of a Reserve Component of an Armed Force at the beginning of a period of war or national emergency declared by Congress, or if I become a member during that period, my military service may be extended without my consent until six (6) months after the end of that period of war.

c. As a member of a Reserve Component, in time of war or national emergency declared by the Congress, I may be required to serve on active duty (other than for training) for the entire period of the war or emergency and for six (6) months after its end.

So, again, legally and contractually (in case you missed it the first time), the rules are pretty simple, and they're spelled out for you before you sign up: when you join, you accept an eight year obligation. You're not out until the eight years is up. If you accept a commission (as an officer or as a commissioned warrant), you're not out until your initial obligated period of service is up, and you resign your commission (it goes back to the whole officer and a gentleman thing - gentlemen are expected to know enough to send regrets if they don't want to go to the party.)

At any time during that eight years, if Congress declares a war or national emergency, you can be extended for the duration plus six months. The Pentagon would be well within the limits of the law and its "contractual obligation" to service members to tell the entire force (including the IRR) that they can't get out until the whole thing's over. They haven't done that - they have called people up out of the IRR, including some people who have been extended beyond their original ETS date to go. Those people all knew that possibility existed when they signed up. The IRR exists to provide a pool of trained manpower available in a war or emergency - the benefits you get when you sign up aren't just for the period of active or "drilling" reserve service you accept. They're also in exchange for you being a part of that pool if you get out. If you don't like that, don't sign the paper.

The fact that even the egregiously anti-military 9th Circuit didn't find the counter-arguments to that position to be compelling seems to be a fair indicator that the arguments against involuntary extension lack any merit.

Yeah, of course it would suck to get tapped on the way out the door - and I'm sure it doesn't seem fair to somebody who's been in the IRR for several years, and who thinks of themselves as out of the army, to get pulled back in at the last minute. But it's not an injustice - it's what they signed up for. If there are individual circumstances that would make it an injustice to call a service member back to active duty (a medical condition or an extreme hardship - single parenthood, a sick spouse or parent, etc.), there is a process to apply for and receive an exemption. I know that people and circumstances change in eight years - but there are some commitments you make that you're not allowed to break just because they seem inconvenient later. The military is one of those commitments.

Now, you can argue that calling up IRR soldiers indicates that the system is broken, that we should enlarge the size of our active army beyond 10 divisions, that our officer procurement system is inadequate, etc. I tend to not to give those arguments much credence (the IRR exists to give the military surge capacity beyond its peacetime active levels, and I think that we should give restructuring a chance - even though I'm dubious about some of its particulars - before increasing the size of the military), but they are arguable points. What I think is disingenious is the conflation of concerns about how we manage personnel strength in the ground forces with the argument that it's somehow "unjust" to expect somebody who has signed a contract and taken an oath to honor their commitments.

Bitching about things that seem unfair or burdensome - from KP to guard duty to getting involuntarily recalled - is the ancient and honored right of the soldier. I'm not going to think less of anyone for complaining about how they're getting screwed as they get on the bird - as long as they get on the bird. And this post isn't directed at the IRR soldiers who get called up, make their arrangements, and go, however reluctantly. But the IRR soldiers who do get called up and start looking for ways to get out of it, or seeking support for not going, need to re-read their contracts, honor their commitments, get their heads screwed on straight, and cowboy the fuck up.

UPDATE: Based on some news articles and some commentary in the blogosphere, it appeared that Sgt Santiago might have been screwed by the paperwork - that is, his eight year enlistment had already expired, but his unit hadn't outprocessed him, when the stop-loss was imposed on his unit. If you read the government's appelate brief, though, Santiago's unit was notified for Afghan service on April 17th, 2004, and Sgt Santiago's enlistment wasn't up until June 2004. Had the sequence been reversed, I probably would have supported Santiago's efforts to get out - but the stop-loss was imposed while his enlistment was current.

UPDATE 2: Also according to the brief, the government is depending on the President's authority under 10 USC 12302, 10 USC 12305 and his declaration of national emergency, and not under the declaration of national emergency found in Senate Joint Resolution 23. In that case, his statutory authority is limited to 24 months of active duty instead of the duration plus six months. That reads in the enlistment contract, as follows:

(1) In time of national emergency declared by the President of the United States I may be ordered to active duty (other than for training) for not more than 24 consecutive months.

Slightly off-topic topic for discussion

2005-04-19T13:27:00.000Z

Something I had a discussion about recently, and since I appear to have some visitors who follow military history, I thought I'd pose the question that came up here and see what people think about it. We were talking about Edwin Creasy's book (Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo), and the idea of decisive battle as it applied to World War II came up.

What we were arguing, and what my question for the group is, is what was the decisive battle (or campaign) in the European Theater in World War II? At what point, in retrospect, could you say that the Allies were nearly certain to win; or could at least be thought of as past the "tipping point" of the war? Was it the Battle of Britain, The Battle of the Atlantic, Stalingrad, D-Day, or something else? Was there, in fact, a single inflection point in the Atlantic as there was in the Pacific?

(Actually, you could argue that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Germany's suicidal declaration of war a few days later was the politically decisive moment for both theaters, but that's cheating: what was the strategically decisive moment or campaign?)

A question about wanna-be's

2005-04-18T01:55:00.000Z

As I mentioned earlier, I was on Jack Army's site and read his post about this guy who had some pretty outrageous things to say about his supposed wartime experiences. (The original is reproduced here, if you're interested.)

(By the way, did anyone notice that, not only is he apparently lying about his service, but he's ripping off the Three Bears? Stan thought, "Papa Bear's green beret is too big, but Baby Bear's is just right . . .")

Here's what I don't understand - why do the poseurs always seem to take it so far over the top? This guy claims to have HALOed from a B-52, and to have resorted to cannabilism to stay alive in Vietnam. Why isn't enough to just pretend to have been a "green beret" in the war there? That's not enough pretended glory for them?

I mean, I didn't HALO from a B-52, I didn't fight off a legion of flesh-eating Al-Qaeda with a laser improvised from a .50 cal casing, a watch crystal and a Bic lighter, I wasn't awarded the Medal of Honor (in point of fact, I didn't do anything that was particularly valorous), and I didn't resort to eating human flesh (as far as I know - some of the dishes served up by the Afghans were somewhat mysterious.) Nonetheless, I "lived the myth" of the Green Beret, and I suspect that my war stories would get a respectful hearing at the VFW, and from a local paper, if I chose to go that route.

So why does the guy who's just pretending have to pretend to so much, expecially since it makes him so much more likely to be caught? I think that I need to add a point to my post on how to pretend to be a Green Beret:

Remember, it's a small community, and if you really have HALOed from a B-52, or escaped and evaded across Iran through Turkey, or have been awarded the Medal of Honor, people will know about it. Better to pretend to have been an ordinary, run of the mill Green Beret from an unspecified group, so that the real operators will be less inclined to check your stories.

But I do want to know when I get to learn how to kill goats by wishing them dead, so I can prove I'm a real "Green Beret."

(How do we know that particular Green Beret story is fiction, by the way? If SF guys really could stop someone's heart by thinking about it, there wouldn't be a Sergeant Major on Fort Bragg left alive.)

Oh yeah? Well, I've fast-roped from a C-5!

2005-04-18T00:48:00.000Z

This post from Jack Army, by way of Jennifer, discusses somebody who claims, among other things, to have done a HALO jump from a B-52 (and to have eaten a human being sometime shortly thereafter - sadly for posterity, the recipe wasn't included in the article. I mean, enquiring minds want to know, what is the best way to prepare human: do you broil it over an open fire, make a stew, braise it with some wild onions and thyme, have the liver with some fava beans from your MRE and a nice Chianti you happen to have in your canteen? What?)

Jennifer finds that to be as likely as her being a door gunner on the space shuttle. The whole thing reminded me that I know somebody who has fast-roped out of a C-5. Whenever wild tales of derring-do (usually only slightly exaggerated) came up, he could trot that out and top anybody - especially, since, after he explained it, it made sense.

Some background: The C-5 Galaxy is the largest plane in the Air Force inventory. It's a monstrous aircraft capable of carrying two M1-A1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks.

Fast-roping (also known as FRIES: Fast Rope Insertion / Extraction System) is a method of getting out of a hovering helicopter quickly. Basically, a 120' long thick squishy rope hangs out of the top of the door, and the fast-roper reaches out, grabs the rope, and slides down Batpole style. Fast-roping is always fraught with excitement, since if you miss the rope, or slip, or let go, you get to fall up to 100'. Unlike rappelling, you're not attached to the rope or the helicopter by anything other than your grip. You can also come to grief it the helicopter pilot screws up the hover and gets up more than 120' (more likely to happen at night) or if you're hovering over a building or the like and the helicopter slips sideways while you're on the rope. Sliding off the bottom of a fast-rope and still having 20-30' or more to go isn't any fun.

Fast roping, however, is much faster than rappelling (or landing the chopper, for that matter), so it's become the preferred insertion method out of a helicopter. It's completely unsuitable, of course, for getting out of a fixed wing aircraft with a stall speed of 136 knots (be prepared to do a vigorous PLF - parachute landing fall - at the bottom of the rope!)

But it's true that one of the guys on my team has done a fast-rope from a C-5. Back when he was there, one of the primary missions of the Ranger Battalions was airfield seizure - jumping onto an airfield and taking control of it so that other troops, equipment and supplies could be air-landed. As part of that mission, the powers-that-be were experimenting with having Rangers fly in on C-5s, both so that they could provide security for the aircraft, and so that they could get the maximum amount of equipment onto the airfield in the shortest time. The problem was, how to get the Rangers out of the C-5 after it landed. Because the plane is so big, the troop door is way off the ground - too high to jump out off (especially with 100 lbs+ of gear) without risking a broken ankle. And the cargo ramp takes longer to lower than the Rangers could wait to get in the fight.

So, the solution was to come up with an I-bar that went above the troop door. The aircraft would land, the troop doors would be opened, the I-bars would be put into place, the ropes would be dropped, and the Rangers would fast rope the 10' or so to the ground. An elegant solution, and the best part was that those who had participated in the test could say, with absolute accuracy "Well, yeah, I've fast-roped out of a C-5A Galaxy."

The night that nothing much went right, but nothing much went wrong, either . . .

2005-04-15T17:14:00.000Z

I deliberately stay away from stories that might illuminate our or the enemy's TTP's (tactice, techniques, and procedures.) In this case, though, I'm sure the bad guys have already figured out what we were doing with this one, so with some blurring of the sharp edges of the details, here we go:

One of the things we figured out eventually is that, in the rural areas of Southeast Afghanistan, initiating a raid by driving up to a compound almost never worked. The bad guys almost always had a watcher on the roof if they were in the compound, and they'd spot the incoming vehicles. Given that the terrain we were working in was generally flat (high desert valleys bordered by mountains), you could see for miles from the roof of a compound. Unless the compound was on the main road, the only time you'd see the headlights of three or four vehicles moving together late at night was if we were inbound. If we drove under NODs (night vision goggles) without headlights, the bad guys would figure out that the noise of vehicles with no headlights had to be us. And, of course, if we chose the daring daylight raid, they'd see the military vehicles coming from miles away. During our first raids, it wasn't unusual to see several motorcycles stream past us, and hear later that one of them had been driven by the object of our raid.

Finally, we hit on a tactic that worked pretty well - before the raid kicked off, we'd sneak in a force on foot to surround the perimeter of the compound and keep people from fleeing once the vehicles were inbound. Late at night, we'd take two or three US soldiers and a force of ANA (Afghan National Army) troops, and patrol up to the compound we planned to bounce. Once we had the cordon in place, we'd radio the assault force and they'd come in on vehicles and make the hit.

Leading the cordon force was a both a lot of fun and a pain in the ass - it was a lot of fun because you actually got to patrol on foot, if not through indian country, then through what might turn into indian country. SF soldiers never really get over their infantry roots, and walking through a potentially hostile environment leading foreign troops was what we had spent most of our careers training for - it was just like Robin Sage, except in an arid semi-desert environment instead of North Carolina pine forests. (Oh yeah, there were a couple of other differences between Afghanistan and "Pineland." In Afghanistan, the bullets were real, the "g's" were a lot more motivated, and the American dollar went a lot further than it did in Pineland.)

On the other hand, it was a pain because you had to patrol in from far enough away not to alert the bad guys - usually 10km or more from the drop-off point to the coumpound. That doesn't seem like a lot, but by the time you factor in 100 pounds or more of gear, ammo, body armor and the like, and take into account the broken terrain, it was a long walk. In the southeast, the Afghan countryside was criss-crossed with irrigation ditches and dikes that had to be clambered over and through, and the fields between them were usually rutted and uneven. Plus, even in the arid environment, there was the occasional patch of thick vegetation (usually following the streams and riverbeds) that had to be pushed through.

Our senior weapons sergeant, Mike, was a alumnus of 3rd Ranger Battalion, and had a reputation for finding the wettest, messiest route possible whenever he walked point. He was a fervent believer that a) conventional soldiers don't like to get their feet wet, so they won't patrol the creekbeds looking for you and b) the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, even if it's through the middle of a swamp. Back before we got deployed, it was a truism that if he walked point, we were going to get wet - but that was in temperate forests in the states. Maybe the only good thing about being in Afghanistan was the certainty that for once, we could patrol with him and not get soaked.

One of the earliest things we did was institute regular foot patrols around the A-camp. Eventually, we farmed those out to our ANA, but in the beginning, we did it ourselves. On one of my first patrols, I was out with Dan and Mike looping south to take a look at some fields where the bad guys had set up mortars a few days before.

We were walking through some open fields when we came to a fairly thick treeline with a path running beside it. Mike, taking the straightest line to where we wanted to go, began working his way through the treeline. Dan followed him in. Since I was in back, I turned around to pull security in the direction we had come from - it wouldn't have been good for all of us to get hung up in the trees at once if someone had been following us. From behind me, I heard the signature rustling and snapping sounds of someone breaking brush as Mike and Dan worked their way through. Suddenly, there was the unmistakeable sound of someone hitting water - this wasn't the splash of someone going ankle deep, either. This was a deep, full-throated sploosh! that indicated somebody had just gone at least up to their waist. It turned out that the treeline had grown up around the main irrigation stream / canal / ditch that serviced all of the fields in the area. Forewarned, Dan and I managed to only go into the water to mid-thigh - Mike was soaked up to the chest.

On the way back to camp, we had to cross the creek in the other direction. Dan was on point then, and skirted the treeline until he found a litle bridge where the path crossed over the ditch - not more than 30' from where we had pushed our way through in the first place. We were all suitably impressed that Mike had managed to find water, even in the desert, and suggested hiring him out as a human dowsing rod. If you wanted to find water someplace, we figured, all we had to was have Mike lead a patrol across it, and it would be bound to turn up.

Anyway, we had gotten word from a pretty reliable source that a 19 year old boy was hiding rockets in his family compound, and letting the Taliban use the surrounding fields as a launch site to fire the rockets at our camp. Our source told us that he didn't think the kid was really bad - but his father had died, his uncle was angling to take over the family compound and fields and add it to his own, and the local Talibs not only provided the boy and his family with much needed cash, they had also promised to help him in dealing with his uncle.

Dan and I were leading an ANA platoon in to set up the cordon around the compound. We walked the platoon into within about 800 meters of the compound, halted them, and had them set up a secure perimeter (military readers will recognize this as the ORP - Objective Rally Point.) We had driven by a few days earlier on one of our routine mounted patrols of the area, so we had a pretty good idea of how we wanted to do things, but there's nothing like taking a look around before you commit everybody. So, Dan and I took the ANA platoon leader, one of his squad leaders, and a terp, off on a leader's recon of the objective, so we could figure out how we were going to set everybody in. There were two compounds, side by side - one belonged to the boy's family, and the other was his uncle's. We weren't 100% sure which was which, so we planned to surround and search them both. We found a good route to the target, and figured out which squad would go where to surround the compounds. The ANA platoon leader took his soldier and the terp back to pick up the platoon and bring them forward. Dan and I settled in to wait for them to come back.

The ANA lieutenant had only been gone a few minutes when Dan and I saw a light, like a flashlight, snap on and off a few times in the field behind us. Since the light was off behind us, I'm ashamed to admit that we immediately jumped to the conclusion that our lieutenant had gotten lost and was trying to figure out where he was. But, the light kept snapping on, moving over the same ground, and then turning off. Dan and I decided to move down and take a look. We radioed the camp, and had them call the ANA patrol and let them know what we were doing, and to have them wait for us at the release point where we were supposed to link up.

We crept through a field of some sort of waist-high grass towards the light. We weren't making a lot of noise, and what noise we did make was somewhat covered by the sound of a diesel irrigation pump running nearby. As we got closer to the light source, we could make out a man moving around in one corner of the field. Even closer, and we saw that what we thought might have been a rifle or RPG launcher was actually a shovel. From the field, we heard the sound of digging.

Now, this was exciting stuff. I glanced at my watch - it was around 2:30am locally, and here we were, not more than half a kilometer from a compound we knew had been used to fire rockets at us. We were convinced that this was a bad guy servicing a weapons cache - digging up buried rockets to shoot at us. What other reason would someone have to be digging at this time of night? And we were going to catch him in the act!

Dan stayed there to keep an eye on him while I scurried back to link up with the ANA. I got about halfway back, and saw that, instead of doing what we had asked and waiting for us, the entire ANA platoon was making its way down towards where we were. Great. Now, instead of one moving element (me) making its way from a known direction into a static position, we had two moving elements wandering around trying to bump into each other, and not bump into any bad guys. That's how accidents happen. I stopped and waited for them to get reasonably close, then, trying to look as American as possible, stood up and called out softly to the terp: "I'm over here."

As soon as they knew I was there, I walked over to the ANA, and resisting the urge to ask what the hell they were doing there, talked to the ANA lieutenant about sending most of his men back to wait and only taking a squad forward. Even moving quietly, there was no way that the guy in the field wouldn't hear a platoon of men tromping around. He agreed, and we started back towards the digging with a squad of soldiers. We crept back up to where Dan was keeping an eye on things, and he told us that it looked like an old man to him, and that he had been digging steadily the whole time. The ANA lieutenant sent two of his men forward to grab the old man and bring him back to us. They got within maybe 10' when the old guy picked up on them. As nearly as I could follow the conversation (and confirmed later by the terp) the old man calls out "Who's there?" "Get over here now! "replied the two shadowy figures with guns. So the old man screams the Afghan equivalent of "Oh shit, oh fuck, oh no!" and takes off running. The two soldiers take off after him, and probably would have caught him in a dozen steps or so - but at this point the PKM* gunner gets into the act and rips off a burst of about a dozen rounds, which inspires the guy next to him to open up with his AK. Just freaking terrific.

Dan and I leap up, yelling "Don't shoot" in Dari at the top of our lungs (believe me, "Don't shoot" is one of the first phrases you learn), the ANA lieutenant is yelling at his squad, and the old man is screaming at the top of his lungs. So much for surprise.

They dragged the old guy over to where we were, and let him go. He fell to his hands and knees, gasping for breathe with this keening sort of staccato breathing going on. I get him rocked up on his knees, and he's panting, shaking uncontrollably, eyes frozen wide - he looks about one step away from shocking out. Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out if he's been hit or not - running my hands over him looking for an entrance wound while I'm snapping at the terp: "Ask him if he's hurt. Ask him if he's been shot." I hate to admit it, but I was less concerned with the human dimension at that point than I was with all the statements and paperwork this incident would generate if the man was to die or turn out to be seriously injured. I was already mentally rehearsing the conversation that I would be having with my chain of command if it turned out we shot an old man armed with a shovel. ("Hey, sir, it was an Afghan soldier in the Afghan National Army firing an Afghan weapon at an Afghan civilian in Afghanistan. I don't see why you're yelling at me.")

After a few minutes of not finding a bullet hole and of listening to the man's keening, I switched my instructions to the terp: "Tell him, if he's not shot, he needs to shut the fuck up, now!" It turned out, after we spent a few minutes getting the old man calmed down, that despite the gunfire, he was uninjured. Not one of the rounds had hit him, either because the PK gunner was firing a warning shot (his claim), or he just couldn't shoot worth a damn (my suspicion.) Either way, we finally got the old man calmed down to the point that he could talk to us (Not that I mean any disrespect to the Muslim religion, but the process probably would have been helped along immensely if we could have given him a few shots of brandy.)

It also turned out that the old man was the uncle of the boy we had come to collect. He and the boy's family were embroiled in a water dispute over who had the rights to the output from a particular irrigation ditch. Just like in the American Old West, water disputes were a major source of conflict - and, in the absence of any effective court and law enforcement system, often became the basis of a shooting feud. The digging had nothing to do with servicing a weapons cache: that night, at 2am or so, the old man was out there with a shovel diverting the flow of the irrigation ditch back onto his fields. That had been going on every night for the last few nights, and every morning, the 19 year old discovered the diversion and re-diverted the water back onto his land. So far, the bonds of family kept them from shooting each other, but it was only a matter of time.

One of the reasons the uncle was so scared was that he didn't expect Americans and ANA to be out running around in the middle of the night. When he saw and heard the shadowy figures with guns coming out of the dark towards him, he figured that they were Taliban friends of his nephew come to deal with the water issue once and for all. So, when the PK rounds started whizzing past his ears, he was pretty sure he was on his way to a little one on one meeting with Allah.

After he figured out that he wasn't going to die, the uncle was all too willing to make sure that we knew which compound belonged to the boy, and to tell us the best way to get in. Fortunately, the kid had decided to stay put when he heard the weapons fire. He didn't figure that the Americans would come in shooting, so he thought it must be a private dispute he needed to stay out of. He stayed where he was, and we were able to hit the compound and capture him without further incident. I actually ended up feeling a little sorry for him - he was one of those guys that you knew had always been picked on as a kid. He was no good at standing up to his uncle or his mother, who were on different sides of the whole land and water dispute, and I suspect that a lot of the reason he hooked up with the bad guys was to get a little respect as a badass Taliban - and to give him some leverage with his uncle. I also suspect - but couldn't prove - that his mom was involved with the whole rocket thing up to her neck. Hell, it was probably her idea that he become a terrorist in the first place.

Anyway, we held him for a few days, and ended up "paroling" him to the local shura of his tribe instead of shipping him off to Bagram. (A shura is a council of tribal elders who make decisions for the tribe and speak on their behalf.) That worked well for us, since it demonstrated to the community that we were willing to work within their framework, and it saved us the embarrassment of sending a crying kid up there with the real bad guys.

*PKM: Pulemyot Kalashnikova Modernizirovanniy - a Soviet built light machine gun.

Warning - coffee spray alert

2005-04-14T23:22:00.000Z

I got a mention by BlackFive, and in the same post, he talked about another SF soldier - name of Uncle Jimbo. I took a look at his homepage, and he's got some great stories of his own, so he's going to become a regular read for me - you'll find his blog over to the right, with the rest of the SOFBlogs.

He's also got this on his page - purportedly written by a PsyOps soldier name of Specialist Schwarz. WARNING: Put the coffee down before you follow the link - good way to ruin a keyboard, otherwise.

(Guy's definitely a soldier, almost certainly a PsyOps soldier, but I suspect that Schwarz may be a pseudonym - if it were me, I'd wait 'til the statute of limitations ran out before copping to some of these.) PsyOps soldiers are the guys who design information campaigns - propaganda, we used to call it before that became a bad thing - and they tend to be smart, clever, smartass, shoot from the hip guys. Some of that spills over in their relationship with the Army. In the case of SPC Schwarz, it looks like the spill was more like a dam bursting. Schwarz spent some time in Bosnia, where he learned there are a number of things you can't do in the Army - 213 of them, to be exact. Some of them include:

6. Not allowed to play 'Pulp Fiction' with a suction-cup dart pistol and any officer.

29. The Irish MPs are not after 'Me frosted lucky charms'.

47. I am not a citizen of Texas, and those other, forty-nine, lesser states.

56. An order to 'Make my Boots black and shiny' does not involve electrical tape.

83. Must not start any SITREP (Situation Report) with "I recently had an experience I just had to write you about...."

94. Crucifixes do not ward off officers, and I should not test that.

148. Putting red 'Mike and Ike's'® into a prescription medicine bottle, and then eating them all in a formation is not funny.

181. Pokémon® trainer is not an MOS.

205. Don't write up false gigs on a HMMWV PMCS. ("Broken clutch pedal", "Number three turbine has frequent flame-outs", "flux capacitor emits loud whine when engaged")

Go read the whole thing - but don't forget what I told you about the coffee.

Also found a blog from Consul-at-Arms that's a fascinating read - he's former military who's currently an FSO (foreign service officer) with the State Department. Interesting spin on a lot of subjects, plus he's got got a Scots ancestry (or at least a healthy interest), and he reads Keith Laumer. I'm absolutely in favor of anyone from DoS who reads Laumer - it should be required reading for everyone over there. He's also to be found over to the right.

About those beards

2005-04-14T18:08:00.000Z

Twelve suspected Taliban militants died in air strikes by US helicopter gunships and tankbuster jets in south-eastern Afghanistan, while the Taliban militants injured two members of the US-led coalition after fighting broke out early on Monday in Paktia province.

I'll bet this happened around the Logar pass between Gardez and Kabul. It was always a pretty safe place for us, but there are a lot of natural chokepoints going through the mountains where it would be easy to set up an ambush - or, in some places, just roll rocks down the hill and squish a light vehicle, like the Land Rovers we used to drive.

There were basically two ways to get from where we were in SE Afghanistan back to Bagram, and both of them meant driving through Kabul. One way was to go up and over through Ghazni, and then up Highway 1 that ran between Kandahar and Kabul. The other was to go through Gardez, then pick up the road to Kabul. Highway 1 had been freshly paved to try to tie the country together a bit better, and was one of the very few paved roads of any length that existed in the country. Since the road between Gardez and Kabul was also mostly paved, we used to call it Highway 2. (I have no idea what the actual designation was.) Either way, we had to travel many kilometers of bad road before getting to pavement, and then the paved road held its own dangers. The danger of getting hit by an IED* was smaller on pavement, both because it was harder to emplace an IED in asphalt without leaving a noticeable signature, and because it was harder for the bad guys to time one to go off precisely when a convoy went by because we could drive much faster on a paved road. (The IED danger didn't go completely away on a paved road, though. A unit out of Ghazni found a "really big" IED buried below the pavement just north of the city. The bad guys had buried the device before the road was paved. They knew that US forces would tend to gravitate to the good road, and would thus "channelize" themselves on Highway 1. That meant that, sooner or later, the ACM would have a good shot at an American convoy using the IED they had planted months earlier. I didn't particularly like the people who were trying to kill me, of course, but I did admire their tactical patience.)

The biggest danger on the paved roads, though, were other drivers. Few Afghanis had any experience with speed and pavement - until the Americans fixed Highway 1 and a few other roads, most Afghanis' driving experience was limited to badly washed dirt roads, and 20-30 MPH on a really good stretch. Suddenly, they could drive 60-70 MPH, and suddenly, all the traffice from Southeast Afghanistan was travelling along one road - buses, jingle trucks, and an apalling number of Toyota Corollas all streaming up and down Highway 1. While it was far from what an American would think of as heavy traffic, it was more than the Afghanis were used to. And, until you've been confronted by people who have never driven fast, it's hard to appreciate how much judgment of speed and distance is required to do simple things like judge safe passing distances, or when it's OK to pull out of a side road. Wrecks weren't infrequent, and near misses were pretty common.

So, we usually made our way up through Gardez, then through the Logar pass, and onto Kabul, a little to avoid Highway 1, but mainly because Gardez had a pretty big SF base there, with a B team and a couple of A-teams, and could usually be counted on to stand us lunch and diesel for the vehicles if we stopped by. That meant making our way through the Logar pass north of Gardez and then onto Kabul. Some SF team, or partial SF team, made the trip through there at least a couple of times a week, and none of us ever had any trouble, so it seemed like a pretty safe route. Naturally, when a convoy of support people had to come down from Bagram to visit us for a week or so, that was the route they took.

Of course, on the way back to Bagram, they got bounced. No big deal, they made it through and back to base without a scratch. (Well, no big deal for them - as I heard the story, it didn't turn out so well for the bad guys: The 19 year old mechanic riding the .50 cal in the turret shot the ambushers up pretty good, breaking up the ambush, while the twenty something female Engineer lieutenant who was driving the lead vehicle rammed a jingle truck - that was trying to pin them in - off the road. We all thought she was cool anyway, but that definitely confirmed it for us.)

We happened to be talking to one of the ANA company commanders about the ambush a few days later, and we asked the question that was on everybody's mind. Why did we drive the pass all the time and never get hit, while our support people got it their first time out? I mean, at the beginning of the deployment we did everything but run naked through the countryside to encourage the Taliban to come out and fight, and they still waited until our support team came through before springing an ambush. We were happy for the support team and everything, of course, but where was our ambush?

The ANA captain's take on it was this: He said that the Taliban knew better than to attack the "Americans with beards, the Americans who wear hats." He said that they waited for the normal army people - the ones who were clean-shaven and wore helmets - to attack. Our interpreter agreed. He said that he had interrogated captured Talibs in the past, and they had told him that they knew that the Americans with beards would kill them if attacked. And, he added, the Talibs had said that "if the bearded Americans couldn't kill us right away, then the airplanes would come."

It looks like that lesson needs to be expanded to include friends of Americans now, as well. I was glad to see that we were able to bust up the ambush of an Afghan government official, and I hope the word makes it around to the bad guys that hitting them is a bad idea, too. I'm a big fan of CAS (close air support), and believe me, if you're a bad guy, you don't want to be there "when the airplanes come."

*IED: Improvised Explosive Device. A roadside bomb or mine, usually command detonated.

The star spangled banner . . .continued

2005-04-13T14:32:00.000Z

Usually, all warships of the United States fly the Union Jack (in US usage, that's the canton of the US National Flag - the blue part with the white stars - and not the British jack) as their naval jack (the jack is the flag flown from the front of the ship, as opposed to the ensign, which is flown from the back. In the US Navy, the ensign is the US National Flag - the "Stars and Stripes.")

On September 11th 2002, exactly one year after the war on terror started, the Navy started to fly the First Navy Jack from all of it's ships. The first navy jack is a flag consisting of 13 horizontal alternating red and white stripes with a rattlesnake diagonally across them. At the bottom is the motto "Don't Tread On Me." It is, as the directive ordering the change put it: "an historic reminder of the nation's and Navy's origin and will to persevere and triumph."

The Navy SpecWar liasion at Camp Vance (the special operations headquarters in Afghanistan) had one flying over his office, and it was always a pretty moving moment to look over past the National Flag flying in front of the TOC (the HQ building, basically), and see, lower and smaller behind it, the "Don't Tread On Me" flag. It always made me feel like, as long as some of us remember where we came from, our nation would be OK.

So what does that have to do with the Star Spangled Banner? Just this: just as we changed our navy jack, I'd like to see the military change and sing the fourth verse of the National Anthem instead of the first during the war (at official functions, Army-Navy games, and so on.) Just the change would be a reminder of what we're about, and the fourth verse speaks to the US view of war better than almost anything else (of course, its politically incorrect as anything, given that it invokes God's blessing on our nation, but I don't see that as a bad thing, actually.)

O thus be it ever when free-men shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

(Information on the Navy Jack came from www.navyjack.info)

Like, then, Scott says, "Yeah, well, so's your mother!"

2005-04-13T02:07:00.000Z

I'm a bit jealous - first Mustang23 and now Jack Army get flamed like mad and I don't get any hate mail. I try and try to piss people off, and it gets me nowhere . . .

I did notice one bitchy comment on my blog, though - and I only noticed it because SMSgt Mac rose to my defense. His comment made it to my email inbox - where, according to blogger.com, all new comments should come - and I went back and looked at the new comments to what was a fairly old post. (I haven't figured out how blogger decides to send a comment via email - all the comments that do make it there are by people who have a blogger account, but not all comments from blogger accounts do make it. Maybe there's a random number generator involved?)

Scott, apparently deeply scarred by Vietnam, says:

No offense to whoever you are, but you clearly don't understand political reality. Or reality of any sort, as far as that goes.

If you're going to comment on how we're winning the hearts & minds of farmers in Afghanistan by bombing the hell out of them, you ought to start off by addressing the question of why we're bombing the hell out of Afghanistan and Iraq instead of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Seeing as how Iraq (at least) never posed a threat to the US, while Pakistan and Saudi Arabia do (as we've always known) it seems a pertinent question.

I'm amazed that anyone in the military can come out in support of our current military madness. At least in Vietnam the grunts in field knew they were fucked. Translate this whole anecdote into the Vietnam war and it's hard to imagine some grunt posting it to his weblog as "proof" that the war was righteous and smart.

I work in DC, and I come in contact with a fair number of officers in the course of my work. I don't discuss the war with all of them, but those that I have talked with hold a pretty consistent position: We've done some amazing things, but the military was sold a bill of goods and is in some deep shit. The ones that have had command positions are particularly troubled to be throwing away lives with little publicity or fanfare for objectives that cannot be met and will have no lasting impact upon our national security.

I doubt that he'll see this, since I suspect Scott is a drive-by troll, but I thought I'd respond anyway, for the benefit of anyone else who read the comment:

Hey, Scott, first of all, this isn't largely a political site or a strategic history of the War on Terror. I might talk about political issues (especially military related ones) from time to time, but the blog is mostly a memoir. I have strong political opinions on a lot of issues, but if I don't have what I think is a unique insight, or a personal reaction that sets the issue apart for me, I probably won't comment.

So no, I shouldn't "ought to" address the question of Saudi Arabia vs. Afghanistan as a target. (Although you really should actually read the post - where it discusses just that.) This blog is a place for me to tell war stories. It's more or less a get-together with people who want to come here, maybe a little more disconnected, but not that much different than a conversation over a few beers. Sometimes I'll talk about politics, or TV, or the weather, but mostly I'll tell war stories (Everybody does know the difference between a war story and a fairy tale, right?) Blogging is a perfect medium for me, since I can monopolize the conversation without appearing to be rude. So, if you like the tales, keep reading. If you want a steady diet of political analysis, there are a number of better suited blogs.

Also, I don't know that my opinions on the political or strategic execution of the GWOT matter a lot when I'm talking about what I was doing as the "sheriff of Paktika province." When I got activated, there wasn't a form I had to fill out indicating my political support for the GWOT, or for George Bush, before I was allowed to go to war. I volunteered to be a soldier because I thought that supporting this nation's interests and freedoms was important - and in doing so, I explicitly ceded the right to make the decision about whether or not I went to war to the political leaders of this country. I did that because I thought it was important to step up and do my part - and because I thought (and still think) that this country generally does the right thing, and is usually on the side of good, even if mistakes get made from time to time.

I probably try to game the system more than I should, and I know that I complain about the army and everything involved with it more than is reasonable for someone who keeps signing up to stay in, but, at the end of the day, I'm a soldier. And, as a soldier, I go where I'm sent and I do what I'm told. Part of the sacrifice the soldier makes is in the going, but part of the sacrifice also is giving up the decision whether to go or not to go in the first place. The reward for that sacrifice is a sense of satisfaction from performing the mission well, a sense that I'm contributing to something that's important to the country and to the world, and a paycheck that's less than half of what I make as a civilian.

And I suspect many, if not most, Vietnam combat veterans feel the same way. I don't have the faintest idea whether Papa Ray thinks that the political goals in Vietnam were worth the cost. I'd bet, though, that either way he's proud of his service and what he did there. And I bet he takes a great deal of pride in having been a LRRP, even if most people don't have a clue what that means.

But as a citizen, I do have political opinions. And, as a citizen, I find your analysis to be unpersuasive. Whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or not, it was a threat. It was a key player in destabilizing the ME, it provided funding to terrorist organizations, and it required constant diplomatic, economic and military attention to keep it under control. Fighting AQ while Iraq was part of the landscape was like trying to tame a lion with a hungry tiger in the cage.

And we could certainly justify going in there under almost any framework you wanted to choose, from Augustine and Aquinas's "just war" theory, to the casus belli of classical interpretations of international law. I think that a lot of the angst and whining emerging from the political classes over the Iraq invasion comes from Bush's emphasis of a more muscular "some people just need killin' " justification for the campaign over emphasizing the more traditional reasons for going to war. On the other hand, that's one of the reasons I admire the man.

With that said, was it the smartest thing we could have done? Would we have been better off by waiting for Iran to jump bad, or hitting Syria next, or going into the tribal areas of Pakistan instead? Hell, I don't know - I can start an argument in the military history department of almost any college in the world by asking if invading Italy in WWII was the right thing to do. In a lot of them, I can start an argument by asking whether Lee would have been better off letting Longstreet try to turn the Union Army's left flank at Gettysburg. All I can say is that it seems that the Iraqis look like they've gone a long way towards building a civil society that could prove to be turning point, culturally and politically, for the ME. Y'know, I have a lot of respect for Arab culture - it's just a shame the Seljuk Turks screwed it up so bad starting about a thousand years ago. If Iraq can be a model for its reconstruction, than it was worth the blood and treasure. If it all falls apart around our ears, then GW was a fool in over his head. That's why he gets paid the big bucks. Nothing to do now but wait for the judgment of history - but I don't agree that our objectives in Iraq can't be met, or that meeting them won't have a lasting impact on our security. I think that going into Iraq was an audacious gamble with the odds in our favor, and, ultimately, well worth the attempt.

I also think we've done the right thing -as frustrating as it was sometimes hearing about the Taliban operating openly in Miram Shah - in letting Musharef take care of the tribal areas. Short of complete occupation of PK, there's nothing we can do there that won't make the situation worse. As long as we have the option of letting the Pakis clean house on their own, we should do it. If it looks like the Islamonuts or the ISI are about to get ahold of the nukes, then, yeah, we have to invade. Until then, it seems like a good idea to support the moderates, and let them root out the extremists on their own. Insurgencies are sometimes generational wars - look at Northern Ireland - and barging in with conventional military solutions isn't always the right way to handle it ( but sometimes . . .) That's the difference between PK and Afghanistan, where the government wasn't willing to play ball, and was actively and openly supporting AQ forces and offering them sanctuary. We couldn't get them to clean up their own mess, so we had to do it for them.

Ditto for Saudi Arabia - for a long time, the Kingdom of Saud has controlled internal opposition by exporting dissent. And it's true that they made a deal with the devil in their support of the Wahabi Muslims, and that Wahabi set the stage for a lot of the problems we're facing right now. But I think that was blowback, and not malicious intent on their part. We've had the same problem - were the benefits of getting rid of Mossadeq worth Khomeini twenty five years later? As long as the Saudis can be dragged, kicking and screaming, into internal reform and action, are they really the first "enemy" to contemplate military action against?

And the military wasn't sold a bill of goods - they were told what to do and they did it. That's how it works - the military is not a coequal partner in setting policy. We fight and win the nation's wars - we don't decide what they are. And, I don't know what officers you've talked to that feel like they're throwing away lives, but most of the senior officers I've talked to feel like we're doing God's work over there, even if they wouldn't put it that way publicly (well, except maybe for General Boykin.) The military is a big organization, and, as much as some people would like to see it as a monolithic part of the VRWC, look hard enough and you can find almost any political or social opinion you want to - but I'd have to say that my experience has been that the officers who think we're wrong to be in Iraq are a minority.

Too, I don't believe that combat commanders give a damn about whether the casualties under their command occurred with "publicity or fanfare" or not. They would care deeply about the casualties, but little about whether CNN was there for them.

Finally, I don't know where in the post you got the idea that I presented the incident as proving anything about the smartness or righteousness of the war, one way or the other - to my mind, it was an interesting study of human nature that transcended politics. That's why I posted it. (Call it one Afghan's discovery of enlightened self interest.) I find it a little annoying to have to deal with people (usually left-wingers) who see everything through the lens of some bizarre political dialectic.

UPDATE: bblatt asks about colleges with military history departments. OK, I have to admit to a flight of rhetorical excess with that one - Given today's climate in academia, I suspect most military history consists of the occasional bitter professor here and there, waiting for retirement, and made miserable by departmental meetings. However, I did find this list of graduate programs in military history on the web. The University of Kansas one looks cool, what with its relationship with Leavenworth.

Comments . . . we get comments

2005-04-08T17:06:00.000Z

Some recent comments on the blog I wanted to respond to. In no particular order:

Several people commented about my thoughts on the Air Force ad campaign - Hey, I'm certainly not championing the recent Army ads (I haven't seen the minivan ad yet, but it sounds pretty lame, too. What with the call-up of guard and reserve units lately, a lot of guys in Iraq right now left the trappings of middle aged life - like minivans and mortgages - behind to fight the war, while the young stay here and protest a nonexistent draft - go figure.) The last Army ad campaign I liked was the "Be All You Can Be" campaign - and that was just because after a new recruit got into the army, you could tell him "Hey, it was be all you can be - not be what you want to be!" As far as I can tell, the one common thread in the whole "Army of One" thing was that nobody ever carried a gun. The only military ad I ever liked was the (before even my time) Be A Man Among Men - although that's probably too susceptible to misunderstanding these days.

I just watched Operation Night Strike, and all I can say is that it's about time that The Army of One got some weapons. As far as accuracy, it's a highly stylized account of an op where everything went right. The biggest thing that I noticed about it is how compressed the timing is. Remember, in the real world, you do your part of the op, and then you wait for the rest of the synchronization to catch up with you. We had an (Air Force, let's give credit where it's due) Combat Camera crew film an op we did once, and that, in conjunction with some video shot by an aircraft, gave a pretty good overview of the action - such as it was. The thing that struck me was how long everything took, and how much time was spent waiting around for the next phase. In the film, the surveillance team goes in and bang! they recognize the HVTs, so perimeter security goes in and bang! cut to the entry team - they find the HVTs and bang! cut to the extraction. You don't see the surveillance team freezing for three nights, and peeing in ziploc bags, until the targets finally show up, or the perimeter team maintaining security for twelve hours in the rain with nothing happening, or the entry team spending the entire night searching the building the HVTs were found in, or the month of intel gathering that went into knowing about where the bad guys would be when. (And I notice the HVTs got exfiled by ground - probably because the choppers didn't show up because the air liaison missed a filing deadline or something.)

Kristy asks about the phrase "lock and load," and actually gets quite a good explanation, and learns the difference between a bullet and a round. Later, maybe we can cover the difference between an automatic weapon and a semi-automatic weapon, or between a magazine and a clip. Everyone who's seen Full Metal Jacket should have the difference between a rifle and a gun down already.

The only thing I'd add to the lock and load discussion is that it can be used in a general way to mean "get ready." When you lock and load, you're prepared to go and kill people. The order to lock and load is generally given at some point before you cross into indian country. The first time you hear it in a combat zone is a pretty significant event in your life.

Some good comments on the CIB. One point that came out from Yankee Tech: to get a CIB, you have to have an Infantry or Special Forces specialty. One quirk to that rule is that if you don't have one of those specialties, you don't get a CIB. It's designed to set a strict standard for who gets to wear the CIB, but it sometimes leads to some real unfairness. If you're a MOS 25C radio operator assigned to an infantry battalion, you get in an ambush, then everyone around you will get the CIB - but you won't. Even if the guy in your vehicle on the .50 cal gets wounded, and you grab the gun and fight as infantry - you might get a decoration for valor, but you won't get the CIB. At first glance, the new award will make that quirk even more unfair for our hypothetical radio operator. He doesn't get the award, even though he's in an infantry unit and possibly performing an infantry job, but the tanker who engages an enemy from inside his tank will get an analogous one.

Finally, I don't mean to imply or reinforce the idea that the AF isn't a combat branch - I've worked with to many CCTs and TACPs to think that - but it does have a flavor that's a bit different than the ground forces. In the AF, most - not all - enlisted jobs are there to support the aircraft, so the aircraft can do the killing. That means you've got to attract and retain some very technically savvy, switched-on people in the enlisted ranks - but they don't necessarily have to be the kind of people who enjoy sleeping in the mud. Also, you don't need the sheer numbers of enlisted personnel that the Army needs to accomplish its mission. So, it's true, you're recruiting a different pool of people - although I still am not convinced that staring at an incoming tornado is a good idea. But, I want to make it clear that I have a great deal of respect for anyone who chooses to wear the uniform, regardless of service. (And, to Kristy's point about the post, "We get screwed by the Air Force", I hope the second part of the story made it clear that it was one fairly clueless aircrew that created the problem - the aircrew that was flying the same mission in Afghanistan earlier was exceptional, so it really was luck of the draw that led to the problems. )

For the record, if I'm ever really in trouble and desperately need help, there's nothing I want to hear over the radio more than "This is Viper Two-Two. I'm a flight of two A-10s in from the west." (Unless maybe it's "This is Viper Two-Two. I'm a flight of two Marine F-18s in from the west." Whatever - I won't quibble.)

(And I still owe Lilly on whether I miss being there - I'll talk about that eventually.)

I so much don't understand how to appeal to today's youth . . .

2005-04-07T02:05:00.000Z

I've been out getting in some spring skiing over the last few days (which explains my lack of posting, by the way.) The skiing conditions have been great - T-shirt weather and powder - and the cabin is anything but spartan, with, among other amenities, more cable channels than I can count.

One of them is the Outdoor Life Network, which ran a show on avalanche dogs that I really wanted to see right before putting on skis. The part that I thought was most disturbing though, were the commercials. Specifically, the recruiting commercials, and even more specifically, the Air Force recruiting commercials.

First off, I'm not sure why I'm seeing Air Force recruiting commercials instead of Army - the last thing I saw about the relative strengths of the Air Force and the Army indicated that the Air Force was trying to shed people while the Army was trying to find more. In fact, I read about something called the Blue to Green program, which attempts to get people to migrate from the Air Force or Navy to the Army (and that must be a hard sell - I can see it now: "Hey, Airman, remember when you wanted to join the military and your dad told you about being in the Cav in Vietnam, and told you join the Air Force, or the Navy if you had to, but, never, never even think about the Army? Well, do we have a deal for you!")

Besides, you'd think that the Air Force would be advertising on the Sci-Fi channel or something. If you're interested in the details of the Ididarod, or of avalanche rescue dog teams, the Army is probably more your speed.

The real thing that bothered me about the commercials, though, was the theme. The first one featured a girl staring mesmerized at an approaching tornado, while her father screams frantically at her and finally has to come and grab her and drag her to safety. She grows up to be a mission specialist on the space shuttle.

The second features a pack of snowboarders who board past the prominent trail out sign and get lost. One of them has the technical acumen to actually read a GPS and figure out that, yep, they're not where they're supposed to be. He grows up to be the navigator on a bomber. The tag-line for both commercials was "We've been waiting for you."

Waiting for what? For a girl who doesn't have the sense to get under cover when a freaking tornado's screaming towards her house? For a guy who boards right past a Trail Out sign? Yeah, I know this is supposed to appeal to the gnarly, rad kids out there, but c'mon. There is a difference between cool and stupid, and I'm not really sure we should be pandering quite that hard.

(Besides, kids, let me let you in on a little secret - in the Air Force, with some few exceptions, it's the officers who have all the fun. You're not going to enlist out of high school and go into space, or even get to fly a jet. If you want to be an astronaut or to fly a B-1, stay in college, and major in a hard science or engineering. If you want to fight in a war, try the Army or Marines.)

Badges? We don't need no steenking badges . . .

2005-04-03T17:05:00.000Z

For the first time since World War II, the Army is creating a new combat badge. The new badge, which will be known as the Close Combat Badge, joins the Combat Infantryman's Badge and the Combat Medic's Badge, otherwise known respectively as the CIB and CMB. The new badge will recognize members of other combat arms branches (armour, artillery, cavalry) who "close with and destroy the enemy using direct fire."

Those of you who have served in a combat arms MOS are no doubt divided into two camps about this. Infantrymen are probably terribly disgruntled, while tankers, cavalrymen and field artillerists are no doubt cheering. Most of the rest of you probably wonder what the big deal is.

So you know, in the infantry and in Special Forces, many people consider the CIB to be the most meaningful badge there is - some would say the only meaningful badge there is. That probably seems a little odd from the outside looking in. Most badges and tabs, like the Special Forces or Ranger Tab, or even the Parachutist Badge ("airborne wings") or Expert Infantryman Badge, require a good bit of hard work to achieve. The CIB is different, though. You don't really have to do anything to get it but stand there - and not run away, of course.

There are basically three requirements for award of the CIB: The soldier must be an infantryman satisfactorily performing infantry duties, must be assigned to an infantry unit during such time as the unit is engaged in active ground combat, and must actively participate in such ground combat. From the reg: A recipient must be personally present and under hostile fire while serving in an assigned infantry or special forces primary duty, in a unit actively engaged in ground combat with the enemy.

The CIB was created as a unique honor to recognize the combat infantryman, who usually has the dirtiest job in any war. I think that a lot of infantrymen will be a bit distressed by the new award. For the last four major wars we've fought(WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm), there's been pressure to create a badge analogous to the CIB for the other combat arms, and it hasn't happened until now. The new award, by the way, is only retroactive to Sept 11, 2001, so that the tankers from World War II or the armoured cav from Vietnam won't be getting it in the mail.

So why now? An argument could be made that the changing nature of insurgent war make operations of other combat arms more "infantry-like", and thus deserving of an award. I suspect, though, that it has more to do with morale and retention than anything else.

Badges and awards are a big deal to a soldier - they're visible signs of achievement and distinction. If "spreading the wealth" and making more soldiers eligible for a combat badge inspires some of those soldiers to stay in the army, I think the senior leadership would be all for it.

That's probably also the reasoning behind the new Sapper Tab. Once upon a time, the only tab (a piece of embroidered cloth worn on the left shoulder) was the Ranger Tab, awarded for completion of Ranger school. Special Forces soldiers who completed the "Q" course wore the full flash (the cloth shield shaped insignia on the beret.) SF soldiers who weren't fully qualified wore a rectangular strip cut from the full flash on their beret, and were known as "candy stripers."

Then, in the early '80s, the powers that be decided that the Q course was sufficiently rigorous that soldiers who were graduates but who, for whatever reason, were no longer assigned to Special Forces units, should still be recognized. So the Special Forces Tab was created, and candy stripers were done away with. That was it for 50 some odd years. Now, graduates of the Sapper Leaders Course are also eligible for a tab, and members of other combat arms for a combat badge.

And, why not - the young men out there fighting the war certainly deserve recognition for their service and exceptional effort. And if it does help keep experienced soldiers in the army, and especially in combat arms, then it's a good idea. But expect some muted muttering from the infantry and from graduates of SF and Ranger school about how the prestige of their awards are being diluted by the army's new inclusiveness.

(Want to know more about the CIB?)

A few more blogs in the blog roll

2005-04-01T05:33:00.000Z

There are a few more blogs I've added to my check daily list, and I've been meaning to add them here. One of the things that I find surprising when I read the blogs of people who are downrange at this very moment, is how connected they are. I find references to what's happening that day in their hometowns, to the email a family member sent the day before, to the way the media is getting the war right or wrong right at this moment in time. Roaming around the countryside, and out at a remote A-camp, phone and internet were occasional, sporadic things for us; mail was irregular at best. I understand why that happened to us, by the way. Afghanistan doesn't have the infrastructure that even Iraq has, and it makes sense from a cost / benefit basis to make sure that the large collection of troops have communication first. Phone and internet for less than twenty people was a lower priority. (Besides, as the Korean-born Major in charge of providing such things for SOF forces in Afghanistan put it when he was asked why we didn't have internet access at the A-camps: "They SF. They hard. They suck it up.") While it didn't exactly endear him to any of us, he was right - we would suck it up. Most of us had waited most of our adult lives for a chance to do what we were doing, and not being able to get our foxnews.com fix was a small price to pay.

And even now it's not a complaint. We did get internet connectivity installed a few weeks before we left and the next teams rotated into the country. And I discovered that an internet connection (and the VoIP phones that came with it) was a mixed blessing. Being so isolated led to an almost monastic existence (well, maybe more like summer camp, but you know what I mean.) We were focused on the mission and the team, with not a lot to distract us. Now, once we got the internet, everybody loved to be able to email home every day, and phone home every other night, but I wonder if in some ways it didn't make it harder to focus and easier to worry about home and about family. When phone calls were 10 minutes a week by Iridium satellite phone, the calls were focused expressions of love, longing and hope for the time when people would be re-united. When phone calls ran an hour every other night during radio watch, concerns about kids and mortgages and termites and new washing machines crept in. (Fortunately, we didn't get attacked in the last few weeks - I can just see how "Sorry, honey, got to go - they're shooting at us. I need to make a few calls." would have gone over back home.)

And the families loved it too, but then there were the wives and mothers who panicked if a day went by without an email ("What's happened to him? Why didn't he write today?") And, while a Dear John letter in a war zone is devastating, having a relationship break up by phone over a period of a week or two is even more so. So, even in retrospect, I'm not sure that this level of connection is altogether a good thing. But I don't know - probably the morale benefits are worth the distraction.

Anyway, with that said, Going Downrange is the blog of a lucky fellow who won an all expense paid year-long vacation in lovely Afghanistan. He's in Kandahar right now, and if he's lucky he'll get out of there for awhile and get to see the rest of the country. (Hey, if you read this and the North Face outlet store is still across from the PX, I need to get you to pick me up another jacket. . .)

Mustang 23, from Assumption of Command, is a company commander in Iraq, and always has an interesting take on what's going on in the world. (And he manages to generate hate comments, as well! I've got to figure out how to piss people off with my blog - you get a lot more discussion that way.)

And, since I read Black Five every day, and he probably needs the traffic, I thought I'd add him too.

Hey, GI, your number one?

2005-03-31T03:33:00.000Z

Warning - if the pointy rocks story bothered you, this one won't help.

I'm not sure why so much of the stories I have from Afghanistan revolve around excretory functions. Part of it is probably because it's just a guy thing: The same sort of sophomoric humor that was funny at a Boy Scout Camporee is still funny in the outback of Afghanistan. (In fact, an old saw asks, "What's the difference between Special Forces and the Boy Scouts? Boy Scouts have adult supervision.")

And part of it is probably because for some reason, the change in bathroom habits comes to symbolize all of the other privations a combat tour in a third world country bring about. Until you've done without them for an extended period of time, you don't really appreciate how nice a warm bathroom with sit-down porcelein facilities really is. It's bad enough to go without the Internet for months at a time, or to not have TV, or even electrical power at night - but not being able to use the bathroom without having to walk to a PVC pipe or a wooden outhouse 50 yards away from the sleeping area just seems like more than a modern American should have to bear. It's like turning your back on everything that Western Civilization, Capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution has accomplished for us.

But that's exactly what we had to do: Indoor plumbing is almost non-existent on Army outposts in Afghanistan, and is rare even at the bases at Bagram and Kandahar. While the level of sophistication varies from the simple "piss tube" ( a PVC pipe set up out in the open and routed into the ground) common at A-camps to more rare full-blown porcelain experience with private stall (no waiting) at Kabul or Bagram, the common factor is that latrines are located in a separate facility, and are some distance from the sleeping areas. And woe betide the soldier caught pissing against the side of his tent or hut. We've all done it, in extremis, but it really does quickly stink up the area - not to mention the flies it attracts - so it's a rare act only justified by extreme emergency.

So, to avoid the long late-night walk to the latrine, many soldiers used "piss bottles." (Let me interject here that the following comments only apply to the male of the species - I don't know how the women handled the same issue, and I'm not sure I want to. I do know that I don't have the courage to actually ask on who was over there how she dealt with it.) At any rate, among the men, bottled water bottles or other drink bottles were pressed into service to recycle beverages late at night right there at the bedside, without requiring getting dressed and venturing out for a brisk, sleep-disturbing walk.

Gatorade bottles were particularly prized for their relatively wide mouth. Bottled water bottles were more tricky, since they had a relatively narrow mouth that required precise aim, usually involving direct skin to bottle contact for maximum success. Accurate aim was critical, which was sometimes difficult in the dark. It was important, though, since the results of even a near miss could be tragic - if the stream was directed against the side of the bottle opening instead of straight down into the bottle, there was a real risk of developing too much backpressure, which disturbed both the operator and those nearby, since the swearing which accompanied spraying oneself or one's sleeping area often woke everyone else up.

Also, it was very important that the cap still be present, so the bottle could be neatly sealed for disposal the next morning. It was a definite etiquette violation not to get rid of the bottle very first thing in the morning. One of our guys used to say "There are two kinds of people in the world, those who use piss-bottles and those who don't. And there are two kinds of people who use piss-bottles, those who throw them away and those who don't." Peer pressure pretty quickly took care of those few people who weren't assiduous about getting rid of their bottles, but there were worse things that could happen to them.

During the period that we were temporarily assigned to Asadabad,we ended up sharing a hootch with one of the Army doctors who was up there doing medical care for the civilians in the area. One night right before bedtime, we had just cut the lights in the tent off and those of us who were still getting ready for bed were using our headlamps or flashlights to deal with last-minute activities before turning in. Doc Hagan was in his rack, getting ready to turn in for the night, and was taking a vitamin pill before going to sleep. He put the pill in his mouth, reached down for the water bottle he had beside his bunk, uncapped it, and took a deep drink to wash the pill down.

Suddenly, there was a fit of spraying, gagging and hacking coming from his bed. Doc Hagan lept up from his bed, and rushed outside, flipping the light on and grabbing several water bottles from the stack by the front door of the tent as he went by. There was a great sound of gargling, hacking, and spitting coming from outside the door. After a few minutes, the gargling became interspersed with swearing. Doc Hagan came back in, still swearing, grabbed a few more water bottles, and headed right back out. Yet more swishing and swearing came from outside. Finally, he walked back into the tent, looking about as disgruntled as I've ever seen a man look. What had happened, of course, is that he grabbed the wrong bottle in the dark, and tried to wash the pill down with last night's leftover urine instead of the much fresher bottle of water he had opened that evening.

He was bitching up a storm, of course, and the rest of us were pretty horrified. Dan finally asked him, "Hey man, was it your bottle?" "Well, yeah," Doc Hagan replied, "It was the bottle I left under my bed last night." So, Dan told him "Well, then, it could have been worse. It could have been someone else's bottle."

"Yeah, I guess it could have been." With that, Doc brightened up considerably and we settled back down to go to sleep, the quiet of the night broken only by sudden fits of suppressed laughter coming from nearby bunks. Oh, yeah, and the mortars that went off right behind our hut at about 3am. But, one good thing came out of it: Doc Hagan was religous about getting rid of his used bottles from then on.

Either the beard goes, or I do . . .

2005-03-26T18:23:00.000Z

One of the interesting quirks of Muslim culture generally, and Afghan culture specifically, and Pashtun culture even more specifically, is the emphasis on facial hair. A beard is a sign of manhood, and to be clean-shaven is considered effiminate, unmanly, and is more or less tantamount to an open admission of homosexuality (and not the older man-teenage boy kind, which is tacitly tolerated among the Pashtuns.) The Hazara, an ethnic group in Afghanistan who are descendants of the Mongols who came there with Genghis Khan, had a terrible time under the Taliban partly because many of them couldn't grow beards. They were, by the way, excellent, fiercely loyal soldiers who didn't mind playing a little catch-up now that they were on the side that was on top.

All US soldiers are expected to be clean-shaven, according to AR 670-1, the army regulation covering uniforms and appearance. That created a bit of a problem, since working with the Pashtuns while clean-shaven was a lot like being an undercover cop trying to infiltrate a biker gang while wearing a pink tutu and a lacy top. The powers that be had therefore, reluctantly, grudgingly, and sorrowfully, authorized SF teams working with the Afghans to grow beards. Of course, it being the Army and all, no way was there going to be a clean implementation of a policy that radical. AR 670-1 is the regulation most beloved of a certain kind of Sergeant Major and those who aspire to be a certain kind of Sergeant Major, and for them, allowing SF operators to grow beards was the biggest blow to their perception of what the Army should be since Clinton instituted the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Also, while the senior leadership of the special operations task force endorsed the policy, they were ambivalant about the results, as were many of their subordinates. Part of it was horror: Even though SF is known for pushing the envelope of uniform regulations, outright disregard for them came hard for people who had spent an entire career in a regimented environment. Part of it was embarrassment: The rest of the Army was fighting the war and making time to shave every day, and I'm sure that there was some legitimate fear that many pointed comments would be made later about the troops with scruffy beards and no insignia on their uniforms. And part of it was simply envy: the senior leaders and support personnel were more or less stuck at Bagram airbase, managing and directing everything from the rear, while their juniors were out running around the countryside having the time of their lives. (More than once, I heard one of the rear echelon soldiers assigned to Bagram talking about how we were out there "living the myth." It was usually delivered as the preface to a snide backhanded comment about how little we appreciated the hard work they were doing back there to support us, but you could hear the undercurrent of jealousy; we were, in fact, living the myth: running around with our native troops, operating sua sponte, with little or no direct supervision, killing or capturing terrorists and disrupting their operations - in other words, we were being "real Green Berets" in a way most SF hadn't gotten a chance to be since Vietnam - and we were wearing beards and pakool hats or baseball caps while we did it.)

It didn't usually matter while we were out at the various A-camps, firebases, and other installations in the countryside - unless a dignitary was visiting, or horror of horrors, a journalist was around with a photographer in tow. The rule was that we were not, repeat not, allowed to be photographed unless we were cleaned up. Guidance on how to avoid that short of shooting at the press was not forthcoming. At one point, General Abizaid, basically the guy in charge of the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, visited a nearby firebase. The word went out: anyone with a beard either shaved, or found a mission that required them to be out of the firebase for the duration of the his visit - and made sure that they didn't come home until after the general left. I've always wondered if a man who was smart enough to become the CENTCOM commander was really fooled by all this sleight of hand, or if he at least suspected that some few of his soldiers had lost their deft touch with a daily razor.

Where it really became an issue whenever some of us had to go back to Bagram for one reason or another. There were a series of compromises that attempted to balance the need for facial hair with the need to pretend that it wasn't happening, and, like most compromises, the outcome was usually worse than choosing either one of the alternatives. The facial hair policy was one of those things that led us to question the smarts of the senior leadership we had. Our feeling was that, if they agreed that having facial hair was a good thing for us, they should support and defend the policy, and take whatever heat that it generated, even to enduring snarky remarks from senior officers and Sergeants Major in other units.

And it was the right policy - much of the body language and cultural interaction of a Pashtun revolved around the beard. It wasn't unusual for a Pashtun who was trying to garner sympathy to stroke his own beard, then stroke the beard of the person to whom he was talking. Rubbing beards , or stroking the beard, was a common greeting between friends. It wasn't that we were going to fool anybody into thinking we were Afghan (although a surprising number of people assumed that we were Muslim once the beards had come in); it was that the beards, along with learning the customs and a little bit of the language, made the people that we had to talk to for cooperation or information more comfortable. In the end, it made a marked difference.

But, had the command come out and said "Look, we think that adhering to grooming regulations is more important than getting along culturally - now shave that damn beard off!" it would have been one thing. We would have thought that they were terribly shortsighted, narrowminded and out of touch with what was going on out in the field. But we wouldn't have thought they were a bunch of gibbering idiots. What they came up with, though, made us wonder. The beards were authorized, an exception to policy was authorized, but the senior SF leadership wanted to be able to pretend that it wasn't really happening. Hence, a number of weird and arcane policies were instituted - the gist of which was, "Grow the beard, but don't let anyone in the army know that you've got one, or they might want one too." The problem that arose was, of course, that while it takes 10-15 minutes to shave a beard off (it actually is a more complicated process than I would have thought before I grew one), it takes at least a month to grow a decent one. And, it's a pretty itchy month at that. They're not bad once they're sufficiently long, but the growing in process is uncomfortable.

At first, the policy was simply not to go off Camp Vance (the main SF compound on Bagram) with a beard while in uniform. That one actually made sense, because you could be anybody in civilian clothes - and there were enough civilian contractors running around Bagram to make wearing jeans and a t-shirt plausible. That policy, however, apparently led to complaints that the SF guys out in the field got to wear civvies off of Camp Vance, and nobody else did - so we were told we couldn't wear civilian clothes off of the compound. That meant, in effect, that the one time in a month or six weeks we had an opportunity to use the (minimal) PX, or the Dragon mess hall that actually had much better food than did Camp Vance, we could either shave the beard or stay on the SF compound as if it were a leper colony. Yes, I admit, we were probably bad soldiers over the issue - it wasn't an unlawful regulation, just stunningly stupid - but that had to have been the most quickly circumvented rule ever promulgated. On the other hand, one of the oldest chestnuts in the Army leadership book is "Never give an order that you know won't be obeyed" so I kinda have to ask "what were they thinking?" No-one that I know confined themselves to the compound - especially the guys who dipped and needed desperately to visit their only supply for Copenhagen whenever they got a chance.

So came the next move in the little hirsute chess game we were playing - get in and get out quickly. Anyone on Camp Vance for more than 24 hours was required to shave. Now, nobody needed to be encouraged to get away from Bagram just as quickly as possible, but usually it wasn't possible to get anything done in a day. If you showed up for supplies or paperwork one day, you'd always be short a signature or a truck until the next. The loophole there was the phrase "on Camp Vance." There was an annex, known as the German compound (because German SF stayed there when they were in Afghanistan), so we stayed there and only ventured onto Vance when absolutely necessary (and preferably under cover of darkness.) That actually lasted several months before anyone caught on, so we considered it a success. After that was scotched and the policy extended to cover the German compound, we unilaterally reversed the original policy and began to wear civilian clothes when we went onto Camp Vance. That led to us getting chewed out one night, but over the wrong thing. I was proudest of just how scruffy I had become when I found myself getting chewed out by one of the camp guards, because civilian contractors such as myself weren't allowed onto Camp Vance "without a work order." Of course, I smoothed things over by telling him that it wouldn't happen again - I was just there to pick up a few tools we had left behind.

The "I'm not really in the Army, even though I'm carrying a gun" strategy actually worked for us more than once. A few of us from my team found ourselves in Kandahar on a temporary assignment. We had been attached to an SF team that had the horrible misfortune to have been stuck on Bagram for the entire deployment. This team was working on a mission in conjunction with a SEAL platoon, and we were down there to help out. All of us - SF, SEALs and some support guys - found ourselves living in the SF compound on Kandahar for almost a week. The SEAL platoon was newly arrived in country, and the SF team had been stuck on Bagram, so only the three of us from our team had beards, and we were going right back out into the countryside when we got done at Kandahar. The Kandahar SF compound, however, had almost the same byzantine facial hair policies that existed on Bagram, so by rights, we should have shaved the first night we got in. We dodged it by staying in civilian clothes whenever we weren't actually training, which led most of the army guys assigned to the compound to assume that we were either civilian support specialists or Navy intel weenies (even less military than the civilians, in their opinion.)

I didn't realize how firmly the assumption that we were navy guys had taken hold until late one night after we returned from a training exercise. We had missed supper because we were out training. That wasn't a problem, since we were told that we'd have hot chow waiting for us when we got back in. I thought that was remarkably civilized - missing chow for training usually means getting thrown a box of MREs as a substitute. When we got told "hot chow would be waiting", we thought it was being set up just for us. What they actually meant, it turns out, was that there was a late night meal laid on every night at 2300 (11pm, actually, since I'm in the National Guard), and we were welcome to join in. We got back a little bit after 10pm, stowed our gear and headed over to the mess hall. Dan and I were a little behind everyone else, since we stopped to change back into civvies before heading over. One of the guys comes back around the corner, and tells everyone the main door's locked. Not a problem: we checked the back door and it was open. They probably had the front door locked to keep other people from rogueing our chow. Once inside, we found a pretty nice supper laid out, and proceeded to tuck in.

Probably around 10:40pm or so, Dan and I finished up and headed back towards the tents. We'd made it maybe 20 feet from the messhall when we were confronted by the First Sergeant of the support company that, among other things, ran the messhall. "What the hell are you people doing?" Well, it seemed obvious to us, but it never pays to be rude to the guys that control the food: "We were eating - by the way, thanks for laying that on for us." Well, that really set him off - we had broken into the chow hall to eat early, we had ignored the posted chow times, we had been very bad people indeed. I tried explaining that we had been told the chow was there for us, and we didn't understand that we were supposed to wait until 2300 - hell, that was the first we knew the chow hall was open at 2300. That didn't make him any happier, but it did transfer his anger from us to the chain of command that had miscommunicated the chow message, and he made it clear that he intended to take it up with them right away. He looks at us and snaps "Where's your master chief?" Now, a Master Chief is the senior enlisted rank in the navy - equivalent to a Sergeant Major. The proper thing to do would, of course, have been to set the record straight, explain to the First Sergeant that we were in the army, and suggest that he take up any complaint with the Major who was in charge of us. But, at the time, it seemed easier to say, as I did then "Y'know, I don't know right this second, but I can find him for you if you need him." The First Sergeant tells us that he'll find him later, and that was the last we ever heard about breaking and entering into his messhall. As Dan and I were walking back to our tent, he leans over and whispers "That guy was in the Q course with me. He was on my team in Robin Sage." It turns out that Dan had gone through Special Forces training with the guy who was now First Sergeant of Support Company, and had been in close company with him (on the same team) for the last month of training. Dan recognized him right away, but the First Sergeant never saw through the unkempt hair, shaggy beard and scruffy clothes.

The great irony, of course, is that no-one outside of Camp Vance seemed to care. There were a number of military and civilian organizations with people running around Camp Vance, many of whom were not subject to uniform regulations. These ranged from government agencies with 3-letter acronyms (yes, that's right, the DMV had a branch office there) to the electricians, carpenters and plumbers provided by Brown and Root (a division of Halliburton, and actually known now as Kellogg, Brown and Root, or KBR, thus proving that everyone wants to be a 3-letter acronym.) In other words, once off of Camp Vance, nobody knew or cared why somebody was sporting a beard (oh, I'm sure that the odd conventional unit Sergeant Major here and there might suspect, but they weren't going to confront anybody over it, as long as they weren't wearing US Army insignia along with the facial hair - beards were covered by a de facto "don't ask, don't tell" policy of their very own. )

Of course, it could have been worse - a team that was there on the rotation before us got a temporary assignment to support a Civil Affairs unit working in Herat, in the Southwest. They knew going in that the assignment to civil affairs would last about six weeks, and they'd be right back out with their Afghan militia after that - so they decided not to shave their beards just to have to regrow them. The civil affairs guys had no problem with that decision, but one of the senior SF officers back at Bagram did. He told them to shave and stay clean-shaven until they finished their temporary assignment. (Even though the senior officer outranked anyone on the team, he couldn't technically order them to shave - he could just express a strong preference, with the unspoken promise of trouble later if the team defied his wishes; which is exactly what he did.)

Since Herat was halfway around the country, the senior officer wasn't able to actually check to see if the team was shaving. So, he hit upon what seemed to be a beautiful idea to enforce their compliance. Each team in Afghanistan was issued something called an SOI - Signal Operating Instructions - which contained all of the information (frequency lists, for instance) used for communication. There was a part of this particular SOI that was changed every week. The new information was sent to the teams by radio the day before it changed, so nobody would know what it would be until it arrived over the air. The team was instructed to take a team picture every week with the new SOI information held up on a sign in front of them, and to transmit it back to Bagram. A frankly brilliant plan taking excellent advantage of the technological sophistication of the US military - applied, of course, not to winning the war with the Taliban, but to winning the war between Bagram and the deployed teams. Fortunately for this particular team, though, every really brilliant plan has a fatal flaw. Just as technology made it possible for Bagram to monitor the stubble level of a team across the country, so too did technology allow the team to "get over" on the situation. This team had taken several team photos when they first arrived in country, while they were still clean-shaven, and, in these pictures, they were holding up a sign with their team number on it. It was a simple enough process to photoshop the SOI information onto the sign and send a new picture back to Bagram every week. And the cat and mouse game continued . . .

Whooo-hoooo

2005-03-24T21:06:00.000Z

Warning: Self referential post follows:

I was looking at my sitemeter thingy and I found out that this blog has passed 2200 hits in a little more than 2 and a half weeks. Now, compared to a site like Instapundit or the Mudville Gazette, that's not much, but I think it's pretty amazing. According to the neat little graphs that sitemeter kicks out, the number of visits per day has been ramping up steadily (with one little hiccup around the 19th when I didn't post anything for a few days.) Right now, I can expect about 150 visits to the site per day.

When I started this blog, I really didn't expect to have anyone outside an immediate circle of family and friends reading it. I know that 150 visits per day doesn't equate to anything like 150 steady readers. For example, I always get a few hits referred by random blogs right after I post, so I suppose that some people are following the "latest updated" list to my site. Also, I suspect from the pattern of domain names that visit here, that some people look in more than once a day. And, probably a few people a day follow one link or another here, read a few posts, and decide it's not for them.

I'd guess that 150 hits per day equates to about 75-100 regular readers, but I don't know. Does anyone else have any experience with, or know any rules of thumb for, calculating regular readership from hit rate?

(And, I have to say, even 75 regular readers just astounds me. The number of people who I expected to be reading this - Hi Mom! - totals up to less than 10. It's a little surprising anyone who doesn't already know me would be interested in my less than heroic war stories and fractious opinions. But thanks.)

Say it with JDAMs

2005-03-23T20:29:00.000Z

According to this story, there was a recent incident in Khost where we offed five ACM (anti-coalition militia) after they launched rockets and mortars at our base there, and at three Afghan border checkpoints.

There are two points to take away from this. First, I suspect that the Taliban will be with us for the foreseeable future, as long as they continue to have safe havens inside western Pakistan, and as long as they continue to receive funding from Wahabbi extremists. Now, I understand the political realities around the Musharef government - he's doing a hell of a job keeping the Paki islamic nutcases from taking over the asylum, and any large scale incursion by the US military runs the risk of being the tipping point for Pakistan. If Musharef falls over anti-US sentiment, any other government that emerges would likely be worse, plus we'd have to worry about where the Paki nukes end up. And it's the calculations around the danger of internal unrest that also prevent Musharef from "grasping the nettle" and cleaning out the rat's nest of the tribal areas himself. I'm less sure of why we continue to tolerate the financial support for islamic terrorists that many of the richest and most powerful Saudis provide, but I at least understand the reasoning that we should let them deal with it internally rather than risk the fall of the kingdom of Saud. We may have to intervene militarily in Iran or Syria in the near future - better not to also risk having to intervene in Saudi Arabia.

However, if the Taliban continues to receive Saudi money to support their operations, and they continue to be able use Miram Shah (a city in western Pakistan) as a safe haven where they can stage operational and logistical support, they're not going to go away. The best we can hope to do is to marginalize their influence with the Afghan population, particularly the Pashtuns in the southeast and east of the country. That, coupled with strong intervention at the border, seems to be the best bet. And it appears to be working, but the best we can hope for is a reduction in the level of Taliban operations, and not the end of them. I suspect we're facing a long period of "an acceptable level of violence," as the British used to phrase it during the Northern Ireland conflict.

The second point is that, when you really, really want to get someone's attention, say it with warplanes. It's incredible how much difference in attitude a chain cannon, rockets, and a few 500 lb bombs can make. The A-camp we occupied when we first got to Afghanistan had been established less than two months earlier, and the team that was there before us was still working to get the local area under control. Rocket and mortar attacks were an almost nightly occurence. After a few of them, the team figured out that many of the attacks were being launched from either inside or right next to a local farmer's compound. The team questioned the farmer about it, but he claimed that while the Taliban might be using his fields to launch their attacks, he hadn't given them permission to, and no, neither he nor his family had seen or heard anything - they were always asleep inside his compound when the attacks occurred.

Since the farmer wasn't any help, the team decided to hide a few soldiers out near the compound every night to try to pick up on the attacks. A few nights before we took over, right around 2am, the outpost saw some men drive up to the farmer's fields, literally right outside his walls, and start to set up a mortar. The team called in an A-10, who responded by dropping a couple of 500 lb bombs on the would-be firing party.

The bombs had the effect of breaking up the mortar attack for the night. They also demolished one of the outside walls of the farmer's compound, and ruined a good bit of his orchard. The next morning the farmer showed up at the camp, complaining loudly about the bombing and demanding compensation for the damage. The team explained to him, correctly, that US policy is to pay for damage caused by accident or neglect (for example, if a bomb had inadvertently been unshackled from the plane as it flew overhead), but not to pay for damage that was a result of combat operations. They suggested that he apply to the Taliban for recompense, since it was their choice of firing position that led to his wall being knocked down. Finally, they flatly told him that if they were attacked from the same location again, they would drop bombs again, so if the farmer was really concerned about his family and property, he would help them find the Taliban that were using his field as a firing pit. The farmer left, not very happy.

As part of the turnover, the team that was leaving briefed us about what had happened. We filed it away in case we saw rockets coming from that area, but we didn't think it was very likely. We didn't think that anybody would be stupid enough to try to re-use a place that they had been bombed in. We were wrong. The second night after we took over the camp, at about 2:30 in the morning, we heard what sounded like a short but vigorous firefight coming from the direction of the farmer's compound. If we had been there for awhile, we would probably have rolled out to see what was going on, but with less than a week in country and with only two days out in the bush, we decided to give this one a pass.

The next morning, the local chief of police shows up with the farmer. This farmer had shown up at the police station early that morning to ask the chief to intervene with us on his behalf. Naturally enough, we wanted to know why - had he been helping the Taliban? Not helping, exactly, it turned out, but he had known the bad guys were using his field to fire at us. He didn't want to get involved, though, so he had ignored them. After his compound got bombed, he was a good bit less neutral, and, the night before, when men on motorcycles showed up and started setting up some rockets, he had leaned over the compound wall and told them to leave. They refused, so he opened fire on them. After a brief exchange of gunfire, the bad guys figured out that they were out in the open and he was behind a wall, so they decided to leave. The farmer was worried that we would be upset with him since he hadn't told us beforehand, and hadn't helped us capture the Taliban. We assured him that shooting at them worked just fine for us, and we parted friends. We got rocketed and mortared some after that, but never from that direction.

Quick answer to a question on another site

2005-03-23T02:59:00.000Z

Lilly asked about the numbering scheme for A-teams, and Jack Army responded in this post. Since it seems like at least one person in the world is interested, I thought I'd explain a bit further.

Almost all of the Army's Special Forces fall under USASFC, the United States Army Special Forces Command, which in turn falls under USASOC, the United States Army Special Operations Command, which also commands the Rangers, Psychological Operations, Civil Affairs, and the 160th Special Operations Air Regiment. USASOC is part of SOCOM, the Special Operations COMmand, which runs all of the military's Special Operations Forces (Army SF, Navy Seals, etc.)

Army Special Forces is broken down into Special Forces Groups (usually referred to as "Group.") There are 5 active duty groups, and each is responsible for a different region of the world. 1st Group is responsible for the Asia/Pacific region, 3rd Group for Africa, 5th Group for the Middle East and Central Asia, 7th Group for Central and South America, and 10th Group for Europe.

There are also two National Guard groups, the 19th and 20th. In days past, 19th Group was closely aligned with 1st Group, and 20th was aligned with 7th Group. That was an artifact of the days when there were four Reserve / Guard Groups (11th, 12th, 19th and 20th) and only four active duty groups (before 3rd Group came on line.) Each Reserve Group was paired with an active duty group. 11th and 12th Groups were deactivated in the early 1990s as part of the "peace dividend" after the "end of history" (anybody remember that now?) Now, with the GWOT, that pairing is pretty much out the window, and there's a good bit of discussion about how to handle the National Guard groups going forward.

Since 9/11, part of some groups have been deployed to areas outside their assigned region to support the GWOT. For example, parts of 7th Group have been deployed to Afghanistan.

Each Group is organized into three battalions, and each battalion is organized into three companies. Each company in turn contains six A-teams. So, a given SF soldier might be assigned to a team in B Co, 2nd SF Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group, for example.

In addition to a place in a company and battalion, each A-team has a unique identifying 3-digit (except for 20th group, see below) number. For example, a team might be known as 931 or 562.
The first number designates the Group the team belongs to: all 5th Group teams begin with 5(say, 573). 10th Group uses 0 as their starting number (say, 062), and 19th Group uses 9 (say, 931.) 20th Group is different; they use 20 as their group designator, so they have 4-digit team numbers (say, 2044.)

The second number designates the company within the group. There are 9 companies per group (3 battalions x 3 companies per battalion) and the numbering scheme reflects that organization. The companies are numbered sequentially, starting with 1 (Alpha Company of 1st Battalion) and running to 9 (Charlie Company of 3rd Battalion.)

The third number designates the team within the company, from 1 to 6. (The company headquarters, or B-team, is usually designated with a 0 (for example, 970.) It used to be standard to assign the number 4 to all of the HALO teams (teams specializing in free-fall parachuting - 774, for example) and the number 5 to all of the SCUBA teams. Beyond that, some Groups standardized team assignment for other teams (Lilly mentions one group that designated all of its recon teams with a 2) but that wasn't consistent across the groups.

What a maroon, what an ignoranimus...

2005-03-22T03:16:00.000Z

It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic: So I'm reading Major K's post on the ~~recent anti-war protests~~ fifth column in this country, and I click through to CNN's coverage of the protesters, and here's this doofus:

"This country was founded by acts of civil disobedience," said David McReynolds, 75, of New York, as he marched along 42nd Street . . .

WTFK? This country was founded because, when civil disobedience failed, men with military and political virtue were willing to fight for it. Or does this guy really think that we gained independence from England, and went on to create and maintain a constitutional government, through teach-ins at Harvard?

These people really don't live in the same world I do . . .

And what kinda pisses me off about it is that the existence of people like me makes it possible for people like them to exist without ever having to confront the lunacy of their beliefs.

Interesting, in a morbid sort of way

2005-03-21T18:10:00.000Z

From a Michelle Malkin post dismissing the myth that blacks are being killed disproportionately in Iraq:

A breakdown of KIA's by the NYT. It covers officer vs. enlisted, race, sex, age, education level and pretty much supports the idea that it's a war being fought by the working and middle classes (i.e., most of us.)

It also indicates that the Army and Marine Corps are pretty much getting it in the neck vs. the Navy and Air Force, but that's not surprising given the US's current global air and naval supremacy.

I'd be interested to see a breakdown by rank (that is, enlisted, junior NCOs, senior NCOs, company and field grade officers) and by MOS (combat vs. combat support vs. service support), because it would give a better picture of who's being targeted, but that's probably not of general interest to the NYT's readers.

The anti-war protests probably had at least one benefit

2005-03-21T16:25:00.000Z

I'm not going to comment on the anti-war protests this weekend in Fayetteville and San Diego per se. I think the conduct of the protesters was reprehensible (protest the policies, not the soldiers - as so many other people have pointed out, protesting in Washington DC is acceptable; protesting at military bases is just wrong), but I don't really have anything new to add to the analysis. Lt Smash was there for the San Diego protest, while Ray was at the one in Fayetteville.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't a total loss for the military side, though - my experience from back when I was in living in Fayetteville is that SF operators view confused left wing radical college females as legitimate targets, and, by busing in out-of-town protesters, Code Pink et al,created a target rich environment. (If you accept 1500 protesters in Fayettenam, I'd guess a good thousand or more would be female - based on my instinct that college age women are overrepresented in these things, and heterosexual males of any age are severely underrepresented.)

I'm sure that the approach was pretty much the same as the one guys I knew used to use up at the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area when fishing for coeds: play the tortured, conflicted soldier to the hilt - a sensitive soul who's been forced by circumstance to become a dangerous killer, maybe with a touch of the warrior-poet thrown in. It would be interesting to see some statistics on how many of these earnest young women, after marching against the war, went out to celebrate their victory and found themselves providing "aid and comfort" to one of the poor victims who were forced into involuntary servitude as soldiers for the man. I'd bet it would be more than you'd think. I certainly hope so.

What I learned from life in a combat zone

2005-03-21T00:26:00.000Z

There was some discussion in my unit at drill this weekend about pulling together the "lessons learned" from our recent deployment. The idea is that we'd make a list of things we wished we had known before we went to help out the next time we or somebody else gets deployed.

Its a good idea, and there are some things I would have done differently if I knew then what I know now (driving around in a HMMWV? - always have a 15mm wrench with you!), but I have to admit that I really didn't learn all that much that I didn't know before. I did figure out that some things that I'd been taught in the military before I went really are important (and some other things, of course, aren't.) Most of what I "learned" from my time in Afghanistan is that there's some good advice already out there that's worth taking.

In one way and another, I mostly learned that my Scoutmaster was right - Be Prepared:

"Take care of your equipment and your equipment will take care of you." The best maintenance is preventive maintenance. Consistently cleaning equipment, doing checks and services on equipment, repairing equipment before it fails, makes all the difference in combat readiness. It's not sexy like bouncing compounds or patrolling, but it's just as important to mission success. Spend some time every day cleaning weapons, servicing vehicles, blowing the sand and dust out of radios, whatever. Have a schedule for maintenance (kind of like changing your oil every 3000 miles), and stick to it. Spend some time before the deployment and make sure you have the tools and equipment (e.g, headspace and timing gauges, ohmeters, wrenches) to do your maintenance before you go -if the army gives you the equipment, it should give you the tools to work on it, but that's not always the case.

With that said, equipment always fails, and it never fails at a convenient time. Always have a plan for how to get along without any piece of equipment, and always have a plan to deal with it when it fails (for instance, always, always have a tow strap, jumper cables, and the like with you when driving around in GMVs and such.) Know and rehearse how you're going to maintain security when something breaks and you have to repair or recover it out in the open. There are no time-outs in war, and more than once, I've seen security go to hell when a few guys were under a HMMWV trying to replace a half-shaft.

"Two is one and one is none." If you really can't figure out what you would do without something (like a gun), you'd better have two of them. True story - we had some Polaris ATVs that we used to scout out in front of the main convoy. The riders would bungee their rifles down to the handlebars. One day, one of the scouts flipped the ATV - he wasn't hurt, but his rifle barrel was bent. Not something you want to be without in Indian country. (My advice was that he turn the rifle upside down and flip the ATV over again to straighten the barrel - he didn't try it.)

"Take care of your soldiers and they'll take care of you." Kind of the same deal as equipment. Don't neglect PT just because you're in a war zone - sooner or later, you'll need all the strength and/or flexibility and/or aerobic capacity you can muster. Have a rest plan. Guys can't operate at a fever pitch for months on a time - factor some downtime into the optempo.

"Have a plan. Have another plan for when the first plan doesn't work." (Also stated as "Hope is not a method.") Maintenance is half of implementing the Boy Scout motto in combat. Planning is the other half. It's not enough to have a plan - have alternate plans in case something goes wrong with the first one. Plan for contingencies. You should always be asking the what-if questions, and should have planned and rehearsed, or at least briefed, how to deal with them. Know MDMP (the military decision making process - a process for mission planning) and know what steps you have to hit, and which ones you can skip.

"Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse." A truism of war is that an OK plan well executed will trump the perfect plan that gets screwed up. Once you have the perfect plan, make sure everyone can make it work. Spend more time practicing than planning, and make sure everyone involved knows the plan, knows the objectives, and can execute if he has to. Always do pre-combat inspections - anyone can forget anything, so it never hurts to have a second pair of eyes checking something off.

"Be polite, be professional, but always have a plan to kill everyone you meet." Always good advice, but particularly true in an insurgency. You don't want to alienate the populace, but you don't ever want to forget that the populace includes people who will give their own life to see you dead. Don't let that happen - don't mistake politeness for weakness. Explain why you have to do something (search a car, or handcuff a prisoner, or whatever), be apologetic, but firm - don't ever fail to follow a security measure because you're concerned about making one of the locals angry - and that includes opening fire on a sedan because it doesn't freaking stop when it's supposed to.

"Semper Gumby" Always flexible - it should be the army motto. The flip side of planning is that plans never survive first contact with anything - the enemy, the terrain, the weather, or (especially) higher headquarters. Get used to being flexible, and changing things as you go. Don't get trapped by a planning tempo that lets the bad guys get away because you can't react to changes quickly enough. Know your capabilities, the capabilities of the people around you, the capabilities of the equipment you have, and be able to formulate a new plan out of them on the fly. What really matters is the commander's intent - get used to making that happen,even if everything else changes. If all that fails, and things go wrong, remember:

"Bad news doesn't get better with age." If there's a problem, or something didn't happen that should have happened, or something went terribly awry - go ahead and pass it up the chain of command. The sooner you can get somebody else to share ownership of your problem, the better off you are. And last, but most important:

"Be aggressive." Finally, when all else fails, charge. Violence of action will cover for a multitude of tactical and practical sins.

And, of course, I also learned that some things that matter a lot to a peacetime army don't matter a damn when the shooting starts. I also learned that there are good Sergeants Major out there and not so good Sergeants Major out there, and that the not-so-good ones had trouble making that adjustment. Another true story: The army has found this thing called a Hesco barrier - it's basically a big collapsible wire cube with fabric sides. You set the cube up and fill it with dirt, and it creates a barrier big enough to stop small arms, RPGs, car bombs and the like. All of the camps out in the countryside had been screaming for them, along with Afghani police stations and government offices, and they were in critically short supply. So one day towards the end of our rotation I'd gone back to Bagram, and I find an engineer unit tearing out the Hesco wall between Camp Vance (the CJSOTF compound) and Disney Drive (the main road through the airfield.) Now, understand, this wall wasn't between the compound and the outside village - it was between the compound and the rest of the US Army. So, I thought maybe they were getting rid of the wall and were going to replace it with a fence or something. I asked the engineer running the detail what would happen to the Hescos - maybe we could re-use them. His judgment was that the Hescos, which were nearly two years old, couldn't be disassembled, transported and reassembled with any degree of success. We got to talking, though, and I asked him why they were tearing them out and what they were going to replace them with. It seemed to me to be a pretty low priority job, and we sure could have used the dozer and front-end loader out where we were for a few days. It turned out that the engineer shared my opinion of the importance of the work he was doing. He told me that they weren't putting up a different kind of fence - they were replacing the Hescos. "They're doing what?", "Replacing the Hescos", "Why are they replacing the Hescos?" He explained that the Sergeant Major thought that the current Hescos looked sloppy and weathered, and it didn't project the proper military appearance. So, he took Hescos that could have been sent to the various firebases, camps, and Afghan government installations that were under constant rocket and mortar attack, and instead used them for a beautification project on Bagram, the safest place in Afghanistan.

Hey, pick me up a gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, and a box of rocks ... not too pointy

2005-03-16T18:17:00.000Z

Those of you with delicate sensibilities may want to skip ahead to the next post, which is quite nice and deals non-controversially with other blogs I like.

The Afghan National Army (ANA) was headquartered in Kabul, and didn't have any standing garrisons outside of the capital. Instead, they would rotate a brigade or so at a time out into the countryside, then bring them back to Kabul, pay them, and put them on leave for a few weeks. (The banking system was nonexistent outside of Kabul, so soldiers from outside of the capital would have to get paid, and travel home to give money to their family. At least that was the reasoning behind the system, although I suspect the men enjoyed getting two months off out of the year.)

Every four to eight weeks, we'd pick up a new rotation of Afghan National Army soldiers for a four to six week tour of duty at our camp. We typically got half a battalion worth of ANA soldiers - about 130-150 men - coming into camp to work with us. That meant that, at first, every month or two, we were starting over with a new group to evaluate, bring up to speed, and finally, take out on operations. Later, we got some of the same soldiers rotating through a second time, which sped up the process considerably.

One of the biggest issues with a new group was enforcing the rules about camp hygiene. In the Afghan countryside, there wasn't a lot of emphasis on public health and disease mitigation. Not to put too fine a point on it, a lot of the Afghans were "ground-shitters." If you needed to go, pick an unused spot, screened from view, and have a go at it. That wouldn't do inside the camp, for aesthetic reasons as well as health reasons, so we spent a lot of our time convincing the Afghans to use the latrines.

Thanks to the primitive nature of the facilities at the camp, the process for dealing with bodily functions was a bit elaborate, and must have seemed a little ridiculous to someone used to letting fly in any convenient corner. We had four plywood latrines built for the Afghanis - the latrines were basically an upright, raised box with a door and latch, and a hole cut in the bottom of the platform. Underneath the hole was a 55 gallon drum, cut in half, that acted as a receptacle. No seat required - Afghanis came from the Asian squatting tradition instead of the Western sitting tradition. If you needed to crap, that was the place for it. The contents of the barrel had to be burned every day or so, by mixing in diesel fuel, stirring and igniting. That process had to be repeated until there was nothing but ash left, which could be dumped and buried. That meant that there needed to be as little liquid in the barrel as possible, so the poo and diesel mixture would burn efficiently. That meant, in turn, that if you only needed to piss, you used one of the "piss tubes" set up to the side of the latrines. The tubes were 2" PVC pipe that routed the piss outside the inner wall, into a pit containing a mixture of rock and lime. Explaining all this, and fielding the questions that followed, through an interpreter, to a bunch of guys who came from a culture that was in many ways painfully modest, was always a fascinating experience. The rules were usually greeted with a good bit of skepticism and some resistance - the latrines and tubes were placed to be out of the way and close to the wall, while the Afghan soldiers were staying in tents in the center of the compound, and the Afghan officers were sharing the one good building with us. That meant that any late night elimination required a bit of a hike, unless one chose to use one of several handy patches of ground that were much closer.

We learned a lot of lessons during the first ANA rotation, and some of them were about how to deal with the whole hygiene issue. We found out that the whole "piss here, crap there" was pretty foreign to most of the Afghanis, even with their basic training in Kabul, so we had to set the rules out early and really push the Afghan chain of command to enforce them. We also figured out, that, with the limited amount of time we had to train and work with the Afghan soldiers, it didn't make a lot of sense to use them on fatigue details. During the first ANA rotation, we had a designated detail of soldiers (usually ones who had managed to piss their sergeant off in some way) assigned to camp maintenance and improvement projects - every day, they would fill sandbags, build fighting positions, clean up the camp, and burn the latrine barrels. None of them liked that duty (who would?), and it cut into our training time with them, so we decided to hire locals to take care of those things. We hired two men from the local village just to burn the barrels and shovel lime into the piss trenches. They got the munificent salary of seven dollars a day (about twice the going rate for a day laborer in the area, and two dollars more a day than we paid the locals who were filling sandbags for us) and two meals a day in exchange for taking on the most distasteful job in the camp.

We hired our labor detail right after the first ANA rotation left the camp, so for about two weeks, the sanitation engineering management contingent had it pretty easy. All they had to do was take care of one barrel used by the small Afghan security contingent left in the camp, and the one barrel from our latrine. (Our latrine was right next to the Afghan's, but was distinguished by a raised plywood platform with a toilet seat screwed to it, and by a combination lock on the door, placed there after we found muddy footprints on our toilet seat one too many times.) Neither barrel would become very full from a day's use, so the burn crew was only working about an hour a day. That would change once a new contingent of 150 men showed up, of course.

We felt like we were ready for the second rotation. A few of us convoyed up to Kabul and picked up our boys, and brought them back down to the camp. The camp rules were first discussed the Afghan officers and sergeants, and then, with their help, read and explained to the entire contingent. We managed to make having civlilians handle the shit burning detail into a useful tool to help enforce the camp rules: any Afghan soldier caught going on the ground would find himself assigned to help with the barrels for a few days, which we figured would cut way down on the recidivism rate - as long as we could catch a few and make an example of them.

That night, one of our guys went up into a guard tower overlooking the compound with a pair of night vision goggles(NVGs), a handheld umpteen million candlepower spotlight, one of the American ETTs (embedded tactical trainers: soldiers assigned full-time to training the ANA) and the Afghan Sergeant Major. Sure enough, it was dark, and there were some secluded spots that seemed much easier than the trek to the latrines. Cue our first victim, squatting peacefully in the dark. The NVGs got turned off, the spotlight got turned on, the Sergeant Major identified the culprit, who was pretty horrified to have his private reflections interrupted by the bright and shining beam of authority. Word apparently made it around the tents, because, after the second victim, everybody else walked pretty ostentatiously back to the latrine area. And that, we thought, was that. We had dramatically established a zero tolerance policy for poo in the camp.

Our grand hygiene strategy, though, failed to consider the cultural diversity of the Afghan people. A few days later, we hear a complaint from the Afghan soldiers - one of the barrels isn't being burned, and some of the soldiers can't go until it is. We checked, and, sure enough, one of the barrels was full to overflowing. That raised two questions - why wasn't this particular barrel being burned, and why couldn't the soldiers use one of the other latrines. The Afghan sergeant answered the second one for us. This rotation included some soldiers from near Herat in the southwest part of Afghanistan. Iranian influence was pretty strong in that area, both politically and culturally, and a lot of the soldiers from that area were Shi'ite Muslims instead of Sunni. The Shi'ites had taken to using one latrine exclusively, and that was the one that was overflowing -and the one that pretty quickly became known to the Americans as the "Shia Shitter."

So our medic went and found our burn laborers - why wasn't the barrel being burned? He told us later that he was afraid that the answer was going to turn into some religious dispute over Sunnis burning Shia waste, so he was relieved to find out that they had a practical excuse: The barrel was too heavy. The obvious question got asked, "How can the barrel be too heavy for two men to lift?" The unspoken question was "What are you people eating?" The laborers didn't know why, they just knew that they couldn't lift it, so they had left it in place. Our medic had one of the Afghan sergeants round up a detail, and went out with them to deal with the barrel of heavy poo. Sure enough, four men could barely maneuver the thing out from under the latrine and out through the gate. Once outside, our medic had the barrel dumped into the burn pit. He told me later that the barrel was full of small rocks mixed in with the crap.

It turns out that, out Herat way, the custom is to use a rock in lieu of toilet paper. Our Shi'ite soldiers would pick up a small rock on the way to the crapper - easy enough to do, since we had gravelled that part of the camp - and discard it into the barrel when they were finished. So, another rule had to be added to camp policy - use the toilet paper, not the gravel.

Yet more links. . .

2005-03-15T21:55:00.000Z

I added a few more links to the right - and I've re-categorized the list a bit.

Froggy Ruminations is the personal blog of a fellow operator - the fact that he's dead on with his posts is an added benefit.

Jump Blog is the blog of a former paratrooper who's now a techno-geek working on the America's Army game. Sadly, he's a former paratrooper because of a medical condition. Interesting writer - and I'm not just saying that because all techno-geek paratroopers are great writers, in addition to being good-looking and incredibly interesting people (... I'm just sayin'). Clever title, by the way. A jump log is a chronological list of all the jumps an individual has made. The jump log is a very important document in the life of a paratrooper, both because the senior and master parachutist ratings depend, in part, on the number of jumps he's made (as verified by his jump log) and because drawing jump pay (currently $150 a month) depends on being a "current jumper." (The rules are sort of arcane, but basically, a paratrooper has to make at least one jump every three months to get paid. Eligibility for pay is determined by the jump log.)

The Afghan Warrior is an interpreter for the US Army. By the posts, I think he's assigned to the Camp Pheonix mission. Interesting perspective on current events in Afghanistan.

Afghan News is the Afghan News Network. Its a good way to keep up with what's going on in Afghanistan, if you happen to be interested.

So what do you do for a living?

2005-03-15T19:14:00.000Z

There used to be this guy in my unit who had a thing about girls (no, really.) Let's call him Joe. Inevitably, if you're chatting a girl up in a bar, one of the things that will come up is the question of what you do for a living. Joe's thing was to assume the most outlandish possible profession possible, and convince the girl that that was his calling. He would do the research and could talk a convincing line. No good reason - it was just something to do. One of his favorites was being the pilot for the Goodyear Blimp. (Two mutual friends of his once met each other in a bar in Raleigh over this. One of them overheard the other one telling a girl about flying the Goodyear blimp. He walked up and asked "Hey, do you know Joe...?" )

We were doing some training at JRTC (the Joint Readiness Training Center) at Fort Polk, Louisiana. We'd come back in from a fairly lengthy training mission and had some downtime, so we grabbed a car and headed to Alexandria, mainly to go to Tunk's Steakhouse. Somehow, though, we wound up at a bar afterwards. Joe had insinuated himself into a group of young women who were also out drinking, and was talking to one of them pretty intently. It turned out that she was unmarried and an accountant for a local firm - so far, so good - when the conversation turned to Joe's line of work. "Oh, I'm Arnold Schwartzenegger's stunt double." "Excuse me?" "I'm Arnold Schwartzenegger's stunt double. We're out here shooting a new movie out on Fort Polk." Well, at least on the face of it, it was plausible. Joe had the right build for it, but this girl was having none of it, and threw the bullshit flag. "There is no way. C'mon, what do you do really?" Joe, no doubt having had previous experience in having his cover story rejected, laughed it off like it was a joke. "Oh," he told her, "We're in the army. We're doing some training out on Fort Polk." They chat a bit more, and then she asks "So what do you do in the army?" He squared his shoulders, stuck out his chin, and told her, "Well, actually, I'm in Special Forces. Y'know, a Green Beret." She looked at him for a long moment, and then in this exasperated tone of voice, said, "I'd believe you were Arnold Schwartznegger's stunt double before I'd believe that!"

It was a long time after that before we stopped going up to him and asking "Excuse me, Mister, but are you a reeeeal Green Beret?"

I'm not sure what to think about this one . . . well, now I am

2005-03-14T20:03:00.000Z

I have mixed feelings about this one. Browsing Curmudgeonly and Skeptical last night, I found a link to a site where ~~unwashed scum~~ Howard Dean liberals can post their "apologies" to the world for the re-election of Bush. That site includes this photo:

One the one hand, the Marine is wearing a Combat Action Ribbon, which is the equivalent of the army's Combat Infantryman's Badge. It's awarded for direct participation in ground (or surface) combat, and I'm always willing to cut someone who's in that club a lot of slack.

On the other hand, what he's doing is clearly wrong. Not by voicing his opposition to Bush, but by wearing his uniform while making a political statement designed to embarass the Commander in Chief.

Marine Corps regulations are pretty explicit in that regard, (I've excerpted the pertinent section at the bottom of this post.) My reaction is that some Sergeant Major should be watching this guy clean latrines with a toothbrush, but maybe that's unfair. Should this be overlooked because of his combat experience? I'd be interested in hearing what other servicemen / veterans think about it.

(Of course, he may have only appeared in the picture so that he could sleep with the sociology major standing next to him - I'd have to respect that at least a little bit . . . )

UPDATE:
OK, now I'm sure what to think about this - According to Major Mike, what I took to be the Combat Action Ribbon is actually the Sea Service Deployment ribbon, so, at least at the time this picture was taken, the Corporal in question hadn't been anywhere near Iraq (my bad for not picking up on the lack of an expeditionary medal, which is awarded to anyone who serves in a combat zone. ) Now I'm just sorry that the military has eliminated flogging. . .

Excerpt from Marine Corps Regulation MCO P1020.34F, covering the wear of the Marine uniform:(Section 110002.1)

a. Members of the Armed Forces (including retired members and members of reserve components). The wearing of the uniform is prohibited under any of the following circumstances:

(snip)

(2) During or in connection with the furtherance of political activities, private employment or
commercial interests, when an inference of official sponsorship for the activity or interest could be drawn.

(snip)

(4) When wearing of the uniform would tend to bring discredit upon the Armed Forces.

(snip)

the Secretary of the Navy has prescribed that:

a. The exercise of the rights of freedom of speech and assembly does not include the right to borrow the inherent dignity, prestige, and traditions represented by uniforms of the naval service to lend weight and significance to privately held convictions on public issues.

b. Members of the Navy and Marine Corps (including retired members and members of Reserve components) are prohibited from wearing uniforms of the naval service while attending or participating in, or continuing to attend or participate in, a demonstration, assembly, or activity with knowledge that a purpose of such demonstration, assembly, or activity is the furtherance of personal or partisan views on political, social, economic, or religious issues...

They shoot cows, don't they?

2005-03-12T02:17:00.000Z

Papa Ray's story about shooting the water buffalo (or at least being there when "someone" shot a water buffalo) reminded me of something that happened to us pretty early on in our deployment:

I suppose because everyone involved is very aware of what one can do, the Army has a horror of a loaded weapon that approaches that of the most ardent gun control proponent. In peacetime, there are multiple layers of rituals and procedures to ensure that no-one ever has a loaded weapon off of the firing line of a range. Even in a combat zone, the emphasis seems to be more on ensuring that weapons are unloaded when not needed than on being sure that weapons are loaded when they are needed. Driving into the US Army's compound in Kabul, there is a line where all crew-served weapons are unloaded ("cleared") under the watchful eye of the camp guards before you can proceed deeper into the camp. (A "crew-served" weapon is one that's big enough to have more than one man assigned to it in a standard infantry platoon - machine guns are crew served weapons, for example.)

On Bagram, it was an against regulations to even carry a round chambered in a personal weapon, even a pistol - a regulation that we typically ignored, what with all the Hajis floating around doing day labor. Getting killed on Bagram would be bad enough, but getting killed while carrying empty gun would just be embarassing. (A Haji was one of the locals, for the more politically correct; also known as an HCN - host country national - for the bureaucratically inclined.)

I'm ashamed to admit that at the beginning, we let ourselves get infected by the unloaded equals safe mentality, while at the same time trying to make sure our weapons were up when we needed them, so we came up with a system that invited disaster. Whenever we rolled into camp, we'd clear the crew-served weapons, but, to save time when putting them into service, we'd replace the belt on the feedtray, so that all we had to do was charge the weapon (basically, "cocking" it by pulling the charging handle to the rear and releasing it.) The SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) then became pull the charging handle and go. Which, inevitably, created a problem. To load a Mark 19 - basically,a cross between a grenade launcher and a machine gun - you had to pull the charging handle not once but twice, with the trigger held down. Pull it a third time, and the weapon discharged. Now most people in Special Forces can count to two without a problem, but interpreting the SOP requirement of "pull the charging handle and go" was trickier. When reloading the weapon, did you lay the belt back in the feed tray, so that the weapon was ready to be charged (so the next guy to need the gun would have to pull the charging handle twice), or did you load it and pull the charging handle once, so that all the next guy had to do was pull the charging handle one time and go? You'd think that we'd have seen this one coming ...

We were heading out on a local patrol one day, and I was in the passenger seat of the lead vehicle with the Mk-19 on it. We did have a rule about not charging the crew-served weapons inside the camp. There was a series of fields on the other side of the road from the camp, and it was a good ways before there were any compounds to worry about, so, we'd wait to get through the Afghan Army checkpoint at the main road outside of camp, then pull over to the side of the road and charge the weapons. We made it out of camp and pulled over, and our gunner started to work on the weapon. He laughed, "Hey, I wonder if they already pulled the charging handle once already?" Cha-chink. The charging handle rode forward once. "No way they'd do anything that dumb." Cha-chink. The charging handle rode forward a second time. DHOOOMP! The Mk-19 sent a 40mm HE (high explosive) round sailing out over the field in a high arc. "Fuck, Fuck Fuck - where'd the round go?" "Can anyone see the round?" A few moments later there was a dull CRUMP and a cloud of smoke and dust from behind a small rise in the field. Suddenly, cows and goats came flying over the rise, running like - well, like a scared herd of cows and goats.

A second later, the radio comes to life, "Mongoose zero-five alpha, this is mongoose zero five. Are you guys OK?" "Yeah, we're fine." "What happened?" "Everything's OK. Uh, we'll explain when we get back in. Mongoose zero five alpha out." With that out of the way, it was time to find out if we were really fine. "Did it hit anybody?" "No, there wasn't anything out there but some animals." "OK, let's roll." It was already obvious that we'd have to do something about how we handled the crew-served weapons, but for the moment - no harm, no foul, and we had a mission to run. With the weapons charged and ready to go (and with an impromptu test-fire of the Mk-19) we headed out on patrol.

When we got back, we talked it over. The gunner was terribly embarrassed - the Army conditions you to think of an accidental discharge (an AD), or what they've lately taken to calling an ND (negligent discharge), as a personal failing - something that might happen to a private in a finance unit, but not to an experienced SF operator. Our gunner was harder on himself than anyone else was - he felt like he should have unloaded and reloaded the weapon instead of taking the chance if he wasn't sure. In retrospect, of course, he was right, but the rest of us in the vehicle had the same chance to catch the problem and didn't see it - in this case, the AD was the fault of the procedure and not the soldier.

The solution we came up with would have given big army conniption fits if they had found out, but we didn't have any more ADs. We decided that ADs happened when people screwed around with weapons that might or might not be unloaded, so - we'd keep the crew-served weapons hot all the time. Except when they were being cleaned, they were loaded, charged and ready to go. And we all felt like that was all there was to it. We had fixed the problem and didn't need to do anything further. There was some discussion about painting a cow or a goat on the door of the vehicle, but nothing ever came of it.

And that, we thought, was that. Until the next morning, when the Afghan Sergeant of the Guard showed up with an interpreter in tow. "What's going on?" "The sergeant says that there's a man at the gate who wants to talk to the Americans. He lives near here" the terp replied. Great, we've only been here a few weeks, and we've already got the neighbors dropping by. That's a good sign. "OK, did he say what he wanted?" The terp got this little half-smile, like he was trying to suppress a grin. "Yes, he says that yesterday, you killed his cow."

Well, damn. That's not a good sign. We went out to talk to this guy, and found him holding what looked like some huge strips of beef jerky, and deep in conversation with one of the Afghan soldiers. This particular soldier was an older man named Naji Shah -one of the original Muj who fought the Soviets, in fact - and he came from the area. Naji had become sort of the camp factotum - negotiating with the locals for supplies and labor, and making sure we didn't get ripped off too bad. We invited our neighbor in to talk, and sent one of the Afghans to grab some chai and candy for our guest. After a good bit of small talk - Pashtuns don't jump into business without a good bit of chit-chat - he came to the point. We had killed his cow, and it would be nice if we could pay him something for it. Well, that sounded fair. How much did he want? The interpreter, Naji, and the owner of the cow in question, got into a heated discussion. After a few minutes of back and forth, I had to interrupt the conversation and remind the interpreter that he was there because we didn't speak Pashtu. So, how much did the farmer want? "Two thousand." the interpreter told us. Naji looked disgusted. "Two thousand Afghanis?" I asked, "That doesn't sound like a lot of money for a cow." "No, two thousand dollars - American" the interpreter added, in case we didn't get it at first. OK, that was a lot of money for a cow. Dan was in there with me, and he seemed to think it was a lot of money too. He looked at the terp and said "ask him why the cow is worth two thousand dollars." After a brief conversation, the terp looked back at us and said "He says that it was a very special cow, very valuable. He says he walked all the way from Pakistan with that cow." So Dan looks at the famer for a second, the tells the terp "Tell him that if the cow walked all the way from Pakistan, he must be a very skinny cow. Why should we pay 2000 dollars for such a skinny cow?" Another conversation between the terp and the farmer, and the terp tells us "No, he says that he has spent years and years feeding the cow and making him fat again, so he is a very valuable cow." Then Dan tells the terp "Years and years, huh? So that cow was very old and about to die anyway?" The terp translates that for the farmer, and we're treated to an impassioned speech - we couldn't understand it, but it was obviously very eloquent, with lots of impassioned gestures. I realized that Dan could do this all day, and while it was amusing, it really wasn't getting us anywhere. I interrupted and told the terp to tell the man that we had to go and call our superiors and get permission to pay him for his cow. I gestured to Naji and got him to follow us out.

Once outside, I asked Naji "Is that cow really worth $2000 dollars?" After the terp had translated for us, there was an impassioned outburst from Naji. The terp looks back at us and tells us "He says that, in this area, you can buy a wife for two thousand dollars." Dan chimes in "So ask him if a good cow is worth more or less than a wife around here." It turned out that a wife costs a good bit more than a cow- ironically, this didn't make us feel any better about the way the Pashtuns treated their women. After some discussion, Naji suggested that he go back in and negotiate with the farmer. We agreed, but told him to err on the high side of fair when setting a price.

After about a half hour, Naji came back with our terp. They had agreed that $300 was a fair price. Naji thought that it was a bit too much, but not excessive. We went back in and paid the guy $400, telling him that the extra $100 was for the trouble and expense of replacing the cow (After all, it was apparently going to require a walk to Pakistan and back for our neighbor.) The farmer seemed pretty happy about getting $400 for a cow that was probably worth about $150 on the local economy, but he did make one more run at upping the ante. After we handed him the money, he talks to our terp a minute. The terp turns to us with this "you're not going to believe this" look on his face, and says "He thanks you for the payment, but he also says that you also scared many of his sheep." I told the terp to tell him, politely, that unless a sheep dropped dead of a heart attack, we weren't paying for emotional distress. Our farmer friend accepted that with good grace. I didn't know how to say "You can't blame a guy for trying" in Pasthu, but I'm pretty sure that was the body language I picked up.

The $400 turned out to be a pretty good investment. After paying him and drinking another cup of chai with him, we got up, told him goodbye and started to leave. The terp stopped us "He says, that he knows about some men in the village who are helping the Taliban. Do you want to talk to him about it?" Oh, yes, indeed, we do.

But at least someone in Papa Ray's unit got a meal out of their encounter with a deadly battlefield herbivore.

Found two more blogs I like

2005-03-11T03:06:00.000Z

Both milblogs:

Major K is a army intel officer in Iraq. (Another Guardsman!) Compelling stuff.

Jack Army is a SF guy who's detailed to recruiting duty. Has to have the most thankless job in the army right now.

Thanks for playing "You Bet Your Life!"

2005-03-10T19:46:00.001Z

And the answer is . . .

OK, so it was a trick question. The common thread in all of the shoot / don't shoot scenarios I outlined below is that the man behind the trigger held his fire. If you thought differently, though, that's OK - some of these scenarios aren't set up for cut and dried decisions.

Situation One: This one came from a friend of mine while we over there. There was confirmation later that they were the bad guys, but the sniper didn't see any weapons and he was concerned that they might have been pack mules. The bad guys had been known to grab men up off the road and make them do the heavy carrying, so without seeing weapons, our guy didn't take the shot. I think it was the right call, but it would have saved a lot of trouble later on if he had just shot the bastards.

Situation two: Less than 72 hours after I got to Afghanistan, there I was ... We were doing a "relief in place", where another SF team about to go home was handing off their area to us. A few of us had gone forward to meet with them to plan the handoff, and they offered to take us along on some missions so we'd have a feel for what we were getting into. So there I am, standing outside the gate of the compound and trying to look like I know what the hell I'm doing, when this guy starts walking up at a pretty good clip, smiling and jabbering away in Pashtu. I didn't know what the hell he was thinking, and I still don't - if some guy in body armour festooned in grenades and ammo pouches was pointing a rifle at my chest and yelling at me, I sure wouldn't be smiling. Finally, he got the point and stopped walking about 10' away from me, and I managed to get him to put his hands up. The hidden hand was just holding his shawl, something I figured out later was fairly typical. If that hand had moved, though ... Turned out he was a neighbor, and had been embroiled in a long-standing property line dispute with the owner of the compound we were searching, and just wanted to see if there was anything he could do to make sure his neighbor got it in the neck.

Situation three: I was the buddy by the chest on this one. The guy with me was a big, burly coalminer type from out west - western Pennsylvania, where his family really had been coal miners. It didn't help that the woman was waving the knife all over the place, screaming and yelling. Later, the terp told us that she was calling us "Spetnaz" and yelling "Just tear the chest up. Blow it up. I don't care." She intended to use the knife to pry the trunk open, but she never got the chance. I heard the commotion behind me, and turned around to see this really big knife waving in my face. Before I could react she was on her ass - my coalminer type buddy grabbed her by the wrist and the scruff of the neck and put her down pretty firmly. Of course, if she had been a male, I'd never have had my back turned in the first place. My lesson learned was that sexism could get me hurt. Never let somebody behind you, even if it's a 5' tall, 90 lb. woman.

Situation four: So we're searching this compound, and I hear on the radio that they've detained a man with a gun right outside. I went out to talk to him and found out what happened. It was a really foggy morning, and we had already secured the compound and were doing our detailed searches and interviews. Our perimeter security was just sitting there keeping an eye on things when they saw a man with a shotgun appear out of the fog. Of course, the man with the shotgun saw an armoured HMMWV with a .50 cal machine gun on top suddenly appear out of the fog, too, so it's hard to tell who was more startled. It turned out that the guy was out rabbit-hunting. He even had the only (mostly) beagle I ever saw in Afghanistan. We detained him until the search was over, but our guys fired up a chai burner and had some tea with him while they were waiting. (a "chai burner" is an Afghani propane tank with a stove attachment on top - you took your life in your hands every time you lit one. We had taken to carrying one in each vehicle to heat water and meals while on patrol.) He was actually a pretty good guy - we got an invitation to come to his place for an early breakfast and a rabbit hunt sometime.

Situation five: Decided not to have the Afghans shoot back because of the danger of hitting civilians in the village. There were a couple of security guards that stayed in the bazaar at night, and some of the shopkeepers slept in their shops, so... In retrospect, I'm not sure that the attack wasn't an attempt to provoke us into causing collateral damage, anyway. We did have an A-10 (an attack aircraft) pick up the car on the way out of town, but by the time we had the aircraft on the target, the bad guys were in one of three cars driving away from the bazaar, so the aircraft didn't fire either (I actually think that all three of the cars were bad guys, and the other two were pulling security for the attackers, but there was no way to be 100% certain of that.) Anyway, we got some good rapport points out of the incident - the officer in charge of the Afghans in the compound went with us to talk to the local chief of police about the incident the next day, and they were both pretty impressed with our restraint, and made sure the story got around. "The Russians would have leveled the entire village for something like that, and the Americans wouldn't even let us shoot into the village because we might hurt innocent men." Of course, I'm sure our adversaries viewed that as a weakness, but I think that it's part of the reason we're winning over there while the Soviets lost.

Situation six: The Afghan soldiers were supposed to be in a fixed position, and they weren't supposed to be anywhere near where our guys were. But, sua sponte, after calling their report in, they decided to move around themselves and try to intercept the bad guys. They called it into their officer, but we didn't get the word. Part of the problem was that we retreated the the Opcen (operations center) when an incident started - the Afghans weren't allowed in their because of all of the classified commo gear, so we didn't have a direct line of communications with their leadership when we needed it. After that night, we started sending a US soldier with a radio and an interpreter to stay with the Afghan commander whenever something was going down. Anyway, after a lot of give and take ("Say again your grid coordinates?"), puzzling over maps, and running back and forth to check with the Afghans, we figured out that we had 2 armed patrols 50 feet from each other and about to throw down. Fortunately, the Afghan soldiers never saw our guys, and our patrol held its fire until it was sure of its target. Unfortunately, in all the confusion, the bad guys got away.

You'll notice that there wasn't anything here about roadblocks or checkpoints - that's because we never did them, at least not alone. We had the Afghan Army manning any checkpoints or roadblocks that we set up. Sometimes we'd go along in an "advisory" capacity, and sometimes they ran them on their own. Either way, there didn't seem to be any confusion on the part of the populace that trying to run an Afghan Army roadblock would be a bad idea.

Killing the innocent . . .

2005-03-09T20:36:00.000Z

I only remember being really disturbed one time about a shoot/ don't shoot decision.

"You shot the dog?"
"Yeah, well, I was number one in the stack, and when I went in the door, there was fucking Cujo, right there in my face, fucking barking and snarling and lunging and drooling. So I shot his ass."
"Man, I can't believe you shot the dog."

I really didn't think it was a bad call - a dog can do a lot of damage if it wants - but it bothered me a little bit. The bad guys we were hunting had made a deliberate decision to try to screw up life for their neighbors, and to try to kill us, so I didn't (and still don't) spend a lot of time worrying that I was trying to kill them first. This dog, though, belonged to the family that lived in the compound we were bouncing, and was just reacting to the sudden threat. Most Pashtuns keep dogs as watchdogs or attack dogs, but they consider them unclean and don't develop a lot of attachment to them. This one apparently was more of a pet than usual. It was really heartbreaking to see the kids afterword, crying over their dog. We all felt awful about it - not the shooting, but the aftermath. That one definitely went in the minus column for rapport building. I'm sure years from now, that kid will be saying "Damn Americans. They killed my dog."

On the other hand, it certainly wasn't the only dog we killed. There were a lot of feral dogs there, and they would try to inflitrate our burn pit / garbage dump outside the compound. We had multiple rolls of concertina around the pit, but these dogs could have been VC sappers, they were so good at getting through it. There was a real risk of disease from them, so guys would snipe them from the roof, using silenced weapons so as not to set the camp off. It was a bit disconcerting how many center mass shots a dog could take from a 5.56 before it went down. The guys eventually started taking only headshots - it was considered the height of artistry to make a clean shot that caused the dog to fall into the burn pit, so that nobody had to drag the body over there later.

I never joined in - I have a soft spot where animals are concerned - but I also did in my share of dogs. For a while there, I was known as the "Puppy Slayer", since I was the one who always seemed to take care of the injured or diseased puppies that we ran across or that showed up in our camp. The first time, we were out on a patrol and spending the night at the police compound in a small village at the foot of some Taliban infested mountains. This little puppy wandered up, scrawny and starving, and so infested with mange that he had literally scratched his ears to ragged ribbons. It was just pitiful.

Bobby, my team's senior weapons sergeant, was, if anything, more softhearted than I was about animals. He was another conscientious objector from the Dog Sniping Range back at camp. He and Dan were looking at the puppy and talking, then Dan walks up to me. "Man, that's just pitiful." "Yeah, it sure is." I replied. "I was just talking to Bobby. He thinks we ought to put it down." "Yeah, you're right. Let's go talk to the doc." Jack looked at us like we were talking a foreign language: "I'm not wasting my drugs on putting a dog down. What if we get hit tonight? What if one of us needs the drugs tonight?" Dan and I agreed that he was right, and Dan went back to talk to Bobby. He comes back a few minutes later. "So," I asked, "is Bobby going to take the dog out?" Dan looks at me a little uncomfortably for a minute and said "He says he can't do it." I realized that Dan was telling me he didn't want to do it either.

I told Dan I'd take care of it, and asked him to let the Afghans know they'd hear a shot from right outside the wall in a few minutes, and not to panic. I went to the back of the GMV and grabbed an MRE. I ripped it open and took out the main meal pouch, then went over and scooped the puppy up under one arm. He kind of snuggled in to the crook of my arm, which made me feel even worse. We went out of a small back gate in the wall, and I set the puppy down, petted him for a few minutes, and opened up the MRE pouch. I petted the puppy again, set the meal down in front of the him and he dug in. I let him eat for a few minutes, gobbling and growling, and then drew my pistol and shot him in the back of the head. Fortunately, he went down immediately, pitching into the remains of the beef stew in front of him. I walked back to the GMV, got my e-tool, and covered him and the MRE over with dirt. Everybody was pretty quiet for a few minutes after that. It probably seems a little strange, wasting pity and remorse on an animal in the middle of Afghanistan, but there you have it.

And a few more links worth following . . .

2005-03-09T03:04:00.000Z

Two great military blogs:

Doc In The Box is a currently deployed navy corpsman (although it looks like he'll be back soon.) Its a great blog with a nice mix of personal stories, analysis and links. His description of the paperwork minutia and briefing merry-go-round before coming home brought back unfond memories. Check it out.

This is Your War isn't really a blog at all. It's a war diary, and it's personal, intense and compelling. The author is a National Guardsman in an infantry unit in the sandbox (Go Guard!) Whether he's taking you along on a patrol, describing his Sergeant Major's insanity, or describing the activation and train-up before the war, it's terrific stuff.

And one non-military:
The Special Constable is another British law enforcement blog, this one from a part-time volunteer copper. One thing I learned about the British years ago when we were crosstraining with the SAS - they tend to do things with a little bit more flair and style than we do, and a wry, understated humor seems to be built into their institutions.

Would you take the shot?

2005-03-08T23:51:00.000Z

In my example of the checkpoint shooting, I made the point that, under incredible time pressure and with the highest stakes possible, a soldier has to make a decision. If he guesses right, he's a hero; if he guesses wrong, he's created a tragedy.

And, understand the incredible time constraints that the soldier's decision must happen under. Not only because the foe isn't concerned about bystanders, or in many cases, his own life, but because of a simple reality of fighting - "action beats reaction." In its simplest form, that means that if you're holding a gun leveled at my chest, and I'm holding one by my side (or, if I'm good enough, in a holster), I can kill you. Now you'll probably return fire and take me out too, but I can get the shot off, because your action beats my reaction. Why?

It's the difference between movement time and response time. If I decide to kill you with the gun I have at my side, even with your gun leveled at my chest, you don't know that. And you won't know it until I start to move. Once I start to level my weapon, you have to observe what I'm doing, figure out that its hostile and what your options are (squeeze the trigger, throw yourself to one side, what?) decide to respond, and only then start your movement to counter mine.

Even knowing that, and even within the rules of engagement, there can be vehement disagreement between soldiers about shoot / don't shoot decisions. I saw a long term friendship destroyed by the comment "I don't believe I'd have taken that shot." The army has a tradition of the AAR, the after action review. After every mission, the unit gets together, rank comes off, and everything is discussed and analyzed. Its designed to allow the team to figure out what mistakes were made, how to avoid them in the future, and how to do better. The idea is not to pin blame, but to do better, but they can still get pretty heated - especially when examining a decision that's ethical in nature, like whether or not to kill another human being. Understand, those arguments can cut both ways - it's not always about "you shouldn't have shot him because he wasn't a big enough threat" - sometimes the issue is "by not shooting him, you chose to put my life at greater risk." And sometimes the issue is, "if he get's away now, he's going to try to kill us later."

Below are some scenarios a soldier might face. I've left out the obvious "a car is speeding towards your checkpoint, and doesn't stop when signalled." So, with all the above in mind, would you take the shot:

Situation One: You're in a sniper position, and you see a patrol you're covering take fire from a clump of brush and trees on the edge of a creek. You don't have a clean shot, but a few moments later, you see three men leave the clump of trees, and move down the bank to a small boat. You don't see any weapons. Do you shoot?

Situation Two: You're providing perimeter security for a compound that's being raided. As you move into position, a man in a field next to the compound starts walking towards you. He's smiling, and holding out one hand, but the other one is hidden under his shawl. You raise your rifle and yell "Dresh" (halt) but he keeps coming - again you yell, in Pashtu "Halt, raise your hands." He doesn't comply - Hell, maybe your pronunciation is so bad he doesn't understand you. Do you shoot?

Situation Three: You're a room in the compound of a known Taliban, providing security for your buddy who's searching the room. The compound owner isn't there, but his wife is. There's a locked chest that needs to be opened. Your buddy is standing next to the chest. The interpreter is telling the woman that unless she finds the keys, the chest will be broken open. The woman is yelling and screaming. This goes on a few minutes - now the terp is yelling too, and the woman is hysterical. Suddenly, with a howl, she grabs a large knife from under a pile of cloth and advances on your buddy. Do you shoot her?

Situation Four: You're in the turret of a GMV outside of a compound being searched. Early morning fog has limited visibility to about 20 ft. Suddenly, an local appears out of the fog on the road outside the compound - he's holding a shotgun in both hands. Do you shoot?

Situation Five: It's 2am, and you're on duty on the roof of a SF compound. You see a car drive into the center of the nearby town, and see some men get out of it. One man is carrying what looks like a piece of pipe or a shovel, and the others have bags of something heavy. They disappear behind the wall of a building being constructed. You can still see the car. A few minutes later, you start taking mortar fire from the town. The Afghan sergeant of the guard wants to return fire towards the town into the building. Mortar rounds are getting closer - do you let him shoot?

Situation Six: You've been taking rocket fire from a spot to the south of your compound. Bad guys would sneak in, set up the rockets on a timer, and leave before the rockets go off. To counter that threat, you have several Afghan soldiers hidden out there in three or four man fixed position "observation posts" and a US roving patrol working the area to the south. The Afghan commander says that one of his OPs saw some men moving north through the field to the south carrying what might be weapons. You send your patrol to intercept. The OPs lose sight of the bad guys several times, but you finally get the US patrol close to where the last sighting of the bad guys was. The US patrol settles in a drainage ditch, and sees movement behind a nearby wall. They see a head and the barrel of an AK-47 pop over the wall, look around a moment, and pop back down. Do you shoot?

So, assuming that the rules of engagement allow it under the circumstances, do you shoot? Why or why not?

Next time, I'll use the media coverage of the Punic wars to illustrate my point

2005-03-07T22:47:00.000Z

This is what comes of using a recent incident as an example - its trying to hit a moving target:

Some updates on the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena hostage story.

Michelle Malkin and PowerLine both discuss contradictions that appear in her story, depending on whether she's simply narrating what happened or trying to slam the US military. The Malkin piece makes it appear that CNN was caught actually embellishing her account to make the US look worse.

Major Mike has done a good job of totting up the real cost of ransoming this woman.

Another update: It looks like the reason the US forces didn't know the Italians were in the area is that they didn't tell them.

Lest this make you think badly of Italians as a people, here's a less well known Italian who didn't get out, but who deserves our respect.

The fog of war: Why I don't trust the media, part 2.

2005-03-07T16:41:00.000Z

(Part one is more personal, and is here.)

You might want to go get a cup of coffee - this is going to be a fairly long one. I've seen several news stories about the war lately, and I've read a fairly long thread about the changing role and influence of journalists in the political realm. In short, the initial post expressed concern that the Bush White House is de-legitimizing the press, and, in the comments that followed, a countervailing argument emerged that the traditional political press is delegitimizing itself by no longer representing the interests of the public. I also read Major Mike's post, "Military Distrust of the MSM" about the military's contempt and distaste for the mainstream media, and I'd have to say that he's dead on. That's led me to think about the relationship between the "deligitimization" of the mainstream media in the political realm, and what I think is a similiar situation in the relationship between the press and the military. Here, even though I think there are some similarities between the political relationship of the press and the government and the relationship of press and military, I'm going to draw a sharp distinction between the political context of a given war, and the conduct of war by the US military in general - even if that's a distinction far more likely to be recognized by the military than the media. Why does the typical serviceman feel such contempt and distrust for the press as an institution? How did we come to this state of affairs? I plan to discuss that question, and, along the way, I'll touch on a few recent and not so recent stories to illustrate some of why I think the gulf between journalist and soldiers has become impassable in the 21st century. One disclaimer - I'm addressing trends and majorities here - I don't think that the press (or for that matter, "the military") is as monolithic as they appear here.

And I don't think that its a simple as the "pro-journalism" theory that the military prefers to be able to cover up its "war crimes" without the just and fair light of journalism shining on them - and that military members dislike the MSM because journalists hold the military accountable for its actions. Of course, dislike of negative publicity or the risk of negative publicity is part of it- nobody likes to have their every action examined under a microscope, especially by people who seem to be looking for ways to cast those actions in the most negative light possible. And I think that there is some resentment from many service men about the self appointed role modern journalists seem to play as arbiters of the morality of war. Understand, I'm not taking refuge in the argument that people who haven't shouldered a soldier's burden can't really understand a soldier's actions - although I think there's some truth to that. I am saying that the resentment of journalists taking on the role of moral arbiter exists. But neither do I think that the "pro-military" position that journalists are all aligned in looking for ways to undermine US foreign policy and the US military holds up - although I think that the perception that the majority of journalists have political views that are fundamentally opposed to US interests, and that their choice of stories and of tone tend to reflect that bias, does offer at least a partial explanation for the distrust the typical service member feels towards the press. But there are a number of factors - some outside the control of journalists, and some very much their responsibility - that cause people in the military to distrust and fear the inevitable distortions of truth that happen when the media reports on the conduct and consequences of war. Some of these factors include:

A shift in cultural perspective among mainstream journalists
Eason Jordan discussed CNNs "international" orientation and perspective in a TBS interview several years ago:

We certainly tailor our programming for the marketplace; most of CNN's consumers live outside the United States. A great deal of our programming originates from outside the United States. Many of our journalists come from outside the United States. The reality is that we are a US-based news channel, but that doesn't mean we're American in perspective with our international service. In fact the person who oversees all our international outlets is not an American at all, he's British, and we hired him from the BBC several years ago. There are more than fifty nationalities of journalists who work at CNN International producing that service. If we were to move CNN's base to Egypt maybe they'd say we're Egyptian—you have to be based somewhere. It's the people who produce the channel and the people who provide the reporting who are really responsible for it, and those are people from all over the world, the very best journalists and program makers we can find. No matter what CNN International does, as long as CNN's headquarters is in the United States people are going to say, well, it's an American service. But the reality is that it's an international service based in the United States, and we don't make any apologies about that.

In large part, it seems that the current generation of journalists see themselves as supra-nationalists. Having slipped the surly bonds of patriotism (which they would refer to as "nationalism") and having overcome classical liberal morality that would see the US as a force for good in the world, journalists feel themselves accountable only to "getting the story" and to what they would consider an internationalist point of view. Since military service is one of the ultimate expressions of patriotism, and the US military in particular views itself as moral force - fighting the good fight and obeying the laws of warfare even when their opponents do not - its little wonder that the two institutions fail to see eye to eye.

But I think that the end of patriotism in journalism cuts deeper than just misunderstandings. Kevin Sites, the journalist who filmed the shooting of an injured insurgent by a Marine in a mosque in Fallujah, covered his reasons for going with the story in a post on MSNBC. While I discuss that incident in more detail below, I think that its telling that not once in his decision making process did he ask if the story was good for the war effort. Maybe, given the new morality in journalism, there's no reason that he should have. But not at least thinking about that aspect of the story indicates a very different cultural view than say, Edward R. Murrow or Ernie Pyle. Mr. Sites claims that he's not anti-war or anti-American. Maybe not, but the culture that he moves in, and the implicit moral worldview he has as part of that culture, arguably are.

As an extreme example, Mike Wallace, in a famous PBS discussion, once admitted that he would not take action to prevent the death of US soldiers if it got in the way of a story. (Peter Jennings at least had the grace to struggle with the question.) That kind of disconnect between the patriotism and morality of the soldier and the patriotism and morality of the journalist, should and does invite the contempt of the soldier for the reporter.

Lack of understanding of military matters by reporters who cover the military
Here, I'm not talking about sympathy, or a common world-view between reporters and soldiers - I'm talking about the fundamental lack of understanding of how military weapons, planning, operations and members work. Typical reporters covering the military in Iraq and Afghanistan may have a lot of experience covering bloody little third world adventures that they call wars, but they seem to be clueless about how western militaries operate. My impression is that dealing with most reporters is like a soldier talking to a "military beat" reporter is like a Ford engineer finding a senior editor at an automotive magazine who doesn't know the difference between an automatic and a manual transmission. Given the cultural divide discussed above, its hard to believe that ignorance of military matters isn't a deliberate decision for the war journalist, an expression of his disdain for the military culture.

Let's look at the most obvious unasked question out of the Abu Gharib prison mess - where was the chain of command? And I'm not talking about the BG who ran the prison and who started whining about how she was being "scapegoated" when the story came out - although the primary tenet of command is that the commander is responsible for everything that happens or fails to happen is his command. But the highest ranking soldier to be charged or discussed in the press so far is a junior NCO, and all the rest are junior enlisted soldiers - where was the immediate supervision? Where were the senior NCOs and junior officers who should have been enforcing standards and keeping control of their men? Where were SFC Jones and CPT Smith in all this? And that's the question that should have been asked, whether you believe (as I do,for a number of technical and practical reasons, not just moral ones) that what happened at Abu Gharib was an abberation, or whether you think that PFC England was emailing her amateur dominatrix photos to the SecDef every night.

Either way, the immediate chain of command is the dog that didn't bark in the night. But nobody with enough voice in the mainstream media knew enough to raise it as far as I can tell. That kind of ignorance of the military means that reporters simply can't provide the context around their coverage of military operations, and that increases the problems the next issue causes:

Simple cluelessness and willful ignorance in the journalist's audience
One of the things that I think works to the detriment of military journalism, but is largely outside of their control, is the lack of understanding of the realities of combat that exists in the general public. That lack of understanding is the result of their lack of experience with military matters. Maybe it's partly the fault of the military, but the public really doesn't get how much influence Murphy's Law and the fog of war have on the outcome of combat. I think that this is most clearly demonstrated by the recent media coverage of the rescue of the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena. The facts about the incident haven't emerged yet, but I can apply Occam's razor to my own experience with war and come up with what the most likely interpretation is:

The Italian agent had just grabbed the hostage, or picked her up after negotiating (read bargaining) for her release. He's either worried about the terrorist's grabbing her back, or deciding to take her back after releasing her, and he doesn't trust the Iraqis in the area - probably, given where they were, many of whom were at least passive supporters of the insurgency - so he's going like the hammers of hell, making for a safe area when he sees a roadblock ahead. He probably didn't coordinate with US forces in the area ahead of time, either because he was acting on time sensitive intel and didn't have time, or because of opsec concerns - or he did and the unit conducting the roadblock didn't get the word. He had a limited time (probably a matter of seconds) to figure out that the roadblock was US, and not the bad guys, and he didn't make it. The US forces saw a car speeding towards them and took the shot. Tragic, but not wrong.

That may not be the correct explanation, but it's the simplest explanation and should be the default one, at least until somebody comes up with something to contradict it. That's a very unsatisfying outcome for people who expect war to be like the movies (or at least a morality play), with a clear delivery of good outcomes for the good guys and bad outcomes for the bad guys. People don't want to hear that sometimes things just go wrong, and that while there may be lessons to be learned, there's nobody at fault. Sometimes in combat, the right decision at the time can lead to tragic results. If it's a car bomber, or a wounded insurgent playing possum, the soldier's a hero. Otherwise he's the instrument of a terrible tragedy - but either way, he did the right thing and made the right decision under terrible stress.

Sometimes, simple cluelessness on the part of the audience makes the transition into willful ignorance. People who want to politicize the conduct of the war, to use the happenings in the war to make some point about the policies that led to the war, will I think, look for underlying motives or plans where none exist - thus, a recent thread on a fairly right wing site that supports the war in Iraq included speculation that the Italians deliberately tried to run the roadblock to create political issues for the Bush administration. Other left-wing sites include discussions about the "deliberate execution" of a wounded insurgent in a mosque in Iraq. Right now, the Italians are going on and on about the latest victim of an absurd war." It's this mindset that leads to the next issue:

Anything can be politicized, and, thanks to the cultural shift among journalists, probably will be
In World War II, a reprehensible incident occured when George Patton slapped a soldier suffering from battle fatigue. Now, most people thought it was wrong then, and - thanks to people like Grossman - we know it was wrong now. But it did have the potential to change the course of the war for the worse. And we never will know the opportunity cost - in lives and potential gains - that we incurred in relieving perhaps the best large armoured force commander of the war, on either side, at such a critical point. Should Patton have been punished - yes. Relieving him was a mistake, though, but one made inevitable by the storm of publicity he incurred.

Now, thanks to increased coverage driven by more competition and better communication, multiply that incident by a thousand or more, and change the equation further - in World War II, US reporters largely felt a responsibility to support the war effort. (As I discussed earlier, I believe that that no longer holds true.) Looking back at the recent Italian hostage story, Giuliana Sgrena, who works for the communist newspaper Il Manifesto, has gone from sobbing for her life and pleading with the US and Italian governments to help her on a videotape a month ago, to announcing now that her captors "never treated me badly." And today's CNN post offers her an entirely uncritical forum to advance her anti-US, anti-war agenda, describing the killing of Nicola Calipari, the Italian agent who was with her in the car as an "assassination", and claiming that "the Americans may have targeted her on purpose because the U.S. opposed negotiating with kidnappers."

Technology and competition among news agencies has led to much greater access to combat operations than ever before. The more opportunities that there are to take things out of context, to interpret military conduct in terms of opposition to policy, the more it will happen. Now, I'm not arguing that conduct that violates the law of land warfare or the norms of human decency that exist even in war shouldn't be exposed and punished. I am arguing that journalists who are ideologically driven to believe - or who provide fodder to those who are so driven to believe - that the US military doesn't largely do the right thing in war, or that any action by the military in war is prima facia an immoral, illegal act, will seek out any opportunity to distort reality to convince the public that the US military is engaged in illegal or immoral acts as a matter of policy. Journalists opposed to military action or to US policy have, because of greater access and better communications, far greater opportunity for their mischief than they did previously. Sometimes, though, distortions of truth don't happen solely for ideological reasons (although there may be ideological undertones), but because of the emergence of:

"Gotcha journalism"
My own experience with this involves the BBC rather than a US journalist, but I don't have any sense that US reporters behave any differently. One morning, we got the word from our gate guards that their was "an American", but not a soldier, at the gate to see us. We found this to be a bit startling - so far, none of our countrymen had dropped our cozy little nest in southeast Afghanistan to chat or have a cup of coffee or whatnot. When we got out to the gate, we found, not an American, but a British reporter with entourage. He seemed quite nice and wanted to do a story on the emergence of the Afghan National Army (ANA). We helped him arrange a few interviews with the Afghans and thought that was the end of it. He wanted to get a few of us to talk to him as long as he was there, but I suspect that it was wishful thinking on his part - he knew that interviewing an A-Team, or getting inside to get pictures of our equipment or compound without prior coordination was a non-starter. Later, we heard from one of the interviewees - an officer in the ANA who spoke some English but who had done the interview through an interpreter - that our new reporter friend had been quite keen on getting the Afghans to make an anti-American statement. He asked a number of leading questions along the lines of "Does it bother you when the Americans treat you like second-class soldiers?" The Afghans were pissed about it, but handled the situation professionally, which made me feel pretty good about our rapport with them. Later, we heard from one of our friends in the local police that the reporter had done the same thing - gone by the police station to talk to the police chief (who was also the acting "sub-governor" of the local area.) In that case, the police chief threw the reporter out of his office. (And, one of the local cops stole a pretty nice digital audio recorder from him - he told us later it was in retribution for the disrespect the reporter was showing his American friends, although I suspect he didn't mind having a pretty nice recorder. So, if any of you know a BBC reporter who's missing one, tell him I don't have it but I know who does.)

More recently, and more seriously, a Marine shot and killed an unarmed, wounded man in a mosque. And, if all the information you have on the incident comes from mainstream "journalists", that's probably all you know. Try this story instead. Insurgents had turned a mosque into a weapons depot and strongpoint. A team of Marines went in to secure the mosque, and, after heavy fighting that included engaging the mosque with tank fire, finally secured the mosque and removed the insurgent's weapons. When they withdrew, they left behind five wounded insurgents. They intended to go back and get them, but the situation was fluid, and that never happened. The next day, a different group of Marines took fire from the mosque, and again had to go and secure it. When the entered the mosque, they saw what appeared to be five dead bodies - the only person who knew differently was the embedded reporter, Kevin Sites, who had made the entry with the other Marines the day before, and knew that these were the wounded from the previous battle. These marines didn't know where the bodies came from or what they were doing there, but they did know that one of the insurgent's tactics was to feign death or surrender and then attack. One of the Marines saw movement from the body. "He's faking being dead." Another marine took the shot and killed the threat. After that, the other two remaining wounded gestured to the Marines and made it clear that they were alive and not feigning death. A Navy corpsman with the Marine patrol then provided medical aid for the remaining wounded.

All that boiled down to 15 seconds of video of the Marine taking the shot - because it was the most dramatic moment? Probably, but I think that there's also a large element of taking the part that makes the subject look the worst, and presenting it without explanation and without context. Why bother with that - the political partisans with whom the journalist is in sympathy will fill in whatever context they like. Kevin Sites was sufficiently concerned about the appearance of gotcha journalism to issue, not an apology, but certainly an apologia. He claims he was "haunted" by not being able to explain the process, and explicitly disavows "gotcha" journalism. However, his defense doesn't ring true - he discusses presenting "mitigating" factors on behalf of the Marine, as opposed to explaining the justification for the action in the heat of combat. He claims that he was not supporting a left-wing or right wing agenda, and justifies that claim by implying that the Marine was guilty of an immoral act but then covering the "other side" of the story by discussing "mitigation"- despite the fact that he notes early on in his comments that he was:

"well aware from many years as a war reporter that there have been times, especially in this conflict, when dead and wounded insurgents have been booby-trapped, even supposedly including an incident that happened just a block away from the mosque in which one Marine was killed and five others wounded."

But then later in his article he cites the rules of engagement requiring hostile intent, and says "Aside from breathing, I did not observe any movement at all." Even in his article written 9 days after the incident - and long after the damage was done in terms of the video - he never notes the context, that in that situation, feigning death - with the known insurgent tactic of booby-trapping the wounded - could by itself be a hostile act, and that approaching the man to search him could have led to the death of the Marine doing the searching when the boobytrap went off.

Instead, a complicated story covering two days boils down to 15 seconds:

"However, the Marine could legitimately believe the man poses some kind of danger. Maybe he's going to cover him while another Marine searches for weapons. Instead, he pulls the trigger."

And, to be fair, the coverage could be from his network may have been more balanced than his article implies. But Mr. Sites goes on to say:

"I knew NBC would be responsible with the footage. But there were complications. We were part of a video "pool" in Fallujah, and that obligated us to share all of our footage with other networks. I had no idea how our other "pool" partners might use the footage."

I find that to be disingenious in the extreme. Mr. Sites, a journalism with years of experience, had to have had a very good idea how the "other pool partners" would use the video - in exactly the way they did use it, replaying 15 seconds over and over without context, without explanation. Gotcha, USMC! That sort of behavior from the press may be amusing when the intent is to catch the President saying "Fuck" on tape, but it is reprehensible when it is directed at men making good faith, immediate, life or death decisions. It may increase ratings,and it may have improved Mr. Sites's standing among his fellow journalists, but it provides fodder for those who want to draw moral equivalences between the two sides ("They may target civilians, employ suicide bombers, and use mosques as firing points, but, look, we shoot unarmed men. Both sides are equally immoral") and rightly invites contempt for for the press from the military.

Equally troubling, in this case, is the misleading effect the video clip has lifted out of context and endlessly repeated. Dowdification (after Maureen Dowd) is the act of lifting quotes out of context to impute a different (usually straw-man) position to a public figure than the one he actually takes. Lifting the video out of context and playing it over and over is equally misleading and even more compelling. Did it happen? Yes. Is it the truth? I would argue that, in any way that matters - except for public reaction - no. And that leads to my last point:

Immediacy is not accuracy
It's been observed that, if there had been cameramen attached to the WWII Italian campaign, we would never have won the war. Daily horrific images would have conveyed to the American public that we were losing the war, and calls for negotiation or withdrawl would have become overwhelming. One can draw military parallels between the Bulge in WWII and the Tet Offensive in Vietnam - both of them were a last-ditch military act of desperation on the part of the enemy, and both were overwhelmingly defeated after intense fighting. The difference was Walter Cronkite, who's on-camera reaction is widely viewed as a turning point in the public's support of the war. Or, to be fair, the difference was in the immediacy of the images that came out of Tet, and it the mainstream press's inability to understand or put those images in context.

One way to define pornography is that it appeals to the prurient interest, and lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. I would argue that combat video, without context, without background, without information is akin to pornography in that sense. Carnage, destruction and death will always be intensely disturbing - they disturb the people who are there, too. But until the mainstream press figures out how to use the immediacy of video and real-time communications without appealing to the prurient interest and the worst political impulses of the public, they are providing immediacy at the cost of accuracy.

In conclusion, it seems that a number of issues have emerged that create the divide between the military and the press. Some of those were created by changes in technology, but perhaps more fundamentally, many have been created by the changes in the worldview and the culture of the press itself. While I think that technology issues could be overcome, I'm not so sure about the cultural divide between the soldier's view of the world and the reporters. Maybe that's a good thing, and maybe it's not, but I think that journalists fundamentally need to look to themselves to ask where they go with this now. And the American public needs to look to the mainstream media and ask it that's who we want telling us about our military.

Links, part II

2005-03-07T01:47:00.000Z

A few more sites I tend to drop in on regularly added to the right-hand side:

Curmudgeonly and Skeptical is a fun blog, snarky, completely unfair and usually dead-on accurate blog full of wry observations on life in general and the left-wing in particular. Ditto SondraK - both of them are fun reads and cheer me up when I start taking politics too seriously.

Kim Du Toit and The Smallest Minority are both interesting and clever writers who focus on weapons ownership, training and use by the general public. I always find it a bit offensive, after having gone through some pretty intensive combat marksmanship and close quarters combat training, and having been trusted to drive around in a vehicle that sported more firepower than most small-town police forces could muster, to be told that I shouldn't be trusted with a gun for self-defense because I don't have the background a law enforcement officer has. I recognize that most people don't have the training I've had - to be honest, most soldiers haven't either - but I don't think that lessens their inherent right to defend themselves against unwarranted aggression. These guys do a good job of exploring that point of view, and they're fun to read besides.

Jay Rosen is somebody I discovered recently - he's a journalism prof at NYU, and I suspect he and I would disagree on just about every substantive issue out there. But, he's a fascinating read with a deep insight into what's going on in journalism, and he's really good at fostering intellectual debate on his blog. I'd love to take a class from him sometime. On a personal level, I've been interested for awhile in what happens to journalism when technology changes decouple information gathering and analysis from information distribution. Back in the bad old days, it took a ton of cash to buy a radio transmitter or printing press - now, the Internet makes it free to low-cost to get information and opinion out there. About ten years ago, I did some technology work for a company that was around newspapers when they started asking themselves those questions, and its interested me ever since.) Prof Rosen explores where journalism is today and where its going - excellent reading and excellent discussion.

Links and whatnot

2005-03-06T07:23:00.000Z

I added a link section to my blog, mostly for my own benefit - it will give me a way to check those blogs I want to read regularly from the comfort of my own page. But if you've swung by here, feel free to follow them. I'll be adding more as they occur to me, or as I find them.

Coppersblog is a great picture of working as an English copper - vastly entertaining stuff.

English Magistrate is actually The Law West of Ealing Broadway, but that wouldn't fit on one line - a fascinating look behind the scenes at the work of an English judge.

Day by day is, of course, Chris Muir's brilliant cartoon (I have a comment from a Chris Muir on one of my posts, by the way - it would be way cool if it were that Chris Muir.)

Code Wizard is a good friend of mine from way back - and he has an interesting take on politics and on technology, so he's worth checking out.

The Mudville Gazette is worth reading for its own sake, and because of the breadth of other interesting military sites that get linked, mentioned or discussed there.

Indepundit is Lt Smash - fighting the good fight in San Diego. All I have to say about the relative political merits of Code Pink is that not only are they deluded at best, they're not nearly as cute as the Lebanese girls photographed protesting in Beirut.

I found Major Mike today on the Mudville Gazette - a retired Marine stranded with the loony left in Oregon. While I was reading his site, I kept finding myself going "Yeah, he's right", or "Damn, I wish I had said that." The kind of guy I wouldn't mind sitting down and having a beer with.

I've also added a sitemeter widget, because I've gotten a bit curious about whether anyone outside my immediate circle of friends and family actually makes it over here. When I started this, it was just a way to communicate with people I already knew. Now my ego has gotten involved to the point that I think it would be pretty cool if actual strangers thought what I had to say was interesting enough to read.

The value of being dressed for dress rehearsals - part 2.

2005-03-05T23:00:00.000Z

New readers might want to read part one of the story here. Or maybe not.

As the clearing team went through, it became pretty evident that resistance from the compound was lighter than we expected. Later, we found out why, and it also explained why we landed later than we had planned. There were two Air Force crews running the AC-130 gunships. The one we dealt with in the past was shit-hot accurate and evil aggressive (which are qualities that small units on the ground in Indian country really appreciate in close air support, by the way.) We were listening to the radio one night when Spectre was up, and we heard them call into base:

ACFT: "We just took ground fire, we think from a ZSU. It wasn't anywhere near us - we think they were aiming at the sound of our engines."
BASE: "Roger, continue mission."
ACFT: "Request permission to engage source of ground fire."
BASE: "Negative, continue mission."
ACFT: "We can identify the source of the ground fire - they're out in the open. We can engage them without hitting anything else. Request permission to engage."
BASE: "Negative. Permission denied."
ACFT: "Do you understand that they shot at us and need to die . . .?"

Another time, they had some playtime and were looking for someone on the ground to use them. We called them up and told them it would help if they could take a look inside some compounds we thought the bad guys were using to meet in. The asked what we intended to do they did, in fact, identify an ACM gathering inside one of the compounds. We told them that we intended to let the aircraft smoke the bad guys if they found them, and then we'd go in and clean up. "Then we're in," they replied.

But, that crew rotated out right before the raid, and a new crew came in from the states. I don't want to use the actual callsigns, both for opsec reasons, and because I don't want to embarrass anyone, so, for the purposes of this reminisce, let's just call this aircraft "Clueless."

The plan was for the gunship to make one orbit, hit the corner towers where the heavy guns were, and loiter in the area to make sure that no-one got away when we took down the compound. What happened instead was a comedy of errors that worked to the bad guy's advantage. First, it turns out that the aircrew had neglected to boresight their big gun - a 105 howitzer that could have easily penetrated the thick dried mud walls (think adobe) of the compound. So, their first pass missed the compound entirely, but did alert everyone there that something was up. Then, instead of following the plan and pulling off so we could land, the crew made a second pass and tried again - this time, they managed to hit the kitchen instead of the towers and started a nice fire going there (which becomes important later.) Having failed utterly with the howitzers, they made several more passes engaging the towers with 25mm cannon fire - it failed to penetrate the walls, but it did scare the bejeezus out of the guards in the towers, and caused them to flee, so I suppose it did eventually neutralize the guns . . . it also gave everyone in the compound 20 minutes or so to get ready and get out. So much for a "surprise attack." Fortunately, they decided to run instead of fight, or we'd have been really, really screwed.

So anyway, there we were - we had the TACP (the guy on the ground communicating with the aircraft) with us, so I could hear the radio traffic going on - while the clearing teams were still in the compound, the AC-130 Spectre picked up many small parties moving along the nearby creekbed - but, since they couldn't be sure that they had come from the compound, they wouldn't engage. Now, keep in mind that the rules of engagement for the evening allowed anyone moving between compounds or along the riverbed to be targeted - since they were in an area that they could engage us from - and that the whole job of the Spectre was to keep those people off of our backs. Their decision pissed us off, since the "small groups" were moving into an area that would allow them to engage us with indirect fire, but there you have it. Then came what really pissed us off - the Spectre picked up five people actually moving out of brother in law's compound and towards the creekbed - four of them were armed men, but the fifth was a figure in a burka (the head to toe garb traditionally worn by women of the region.) Because there was a "woman" there, the AC-130 again refused to engage, even though we were explicitly authorizing the attack from the ground, and the overall mission commander was having his chopper (with two snipers aboard) fly around to try to find the the bad guys. We were trying to explain to the Spectre pilot that a) just because there was a figure in a burka, it didn't make it a woman, that b) the guy we were after was known to wear a burka to evade checkpoints, and that c) no Pashtu in existence would provide a woman with an armed escort of four men. But all to no avail. Later, of course, we heard that the guy we were after had escaped the compound by making his way to brother in law's compound and then fleeing from that in a burka with an escort of four men. Air Force pussies. Where was {the other Spectre crew} when we needed them?

A few minutes after all that settled down, rounds started exploding in front of us, in the open area about halfway between the bad guy's main compound and the creek. We greeted that with a sense of relief - the Air Force had finally gotten in the game, even if they couldn't hit for shit - we figured they were firing the howitzer at the guys in the creekbed. After a few rounds, though, we realized that the fire was getting closer to us than to the creek. I was yelling at the TACP to tell the crew they were walking their fire onto our position, when Ross yelled at me to shut up and listen to the incoming rounds. I did, and realized, from the whistle before the explosion, what he was trying to say - but only after some back and forth discussion about what was going on. It wasn't the Air Force - it was the bad guys who had made it to where they had a soviet 82mm mortar and ammunition hidden in the creek bed; and they were shooting at us. It took us so long to figure it out because the bad guys weren't very proficient with the mortar, and were having trouble adjusting fire onto our position. Its the first time in my life that I've engaged in a debate as to whether somebody was shooting at me or not. At that point, with guys actually trying to kill us, the Spectre crew finally got its head out of its ass and engaged the mortar crew. They didn't hit anybody, but they scared the mortar crew off and the incoming fire stopped - pretty much when just it was going to cross the boundary from interesting to exciting. So that problem was over anyway.

By that point, nobody on the outside perimeter was shooting, all the bad guys in the creekbed were gone, and the clearing team had secured the compound. So, nothing to do now but settle in and wait for dawn so we could go over and check out the other compounds. Right about the time we were all settling in and realizing just how damn cold it was, there was a huge BOOM from inside the compound right behind me. It was good timing actually, since the initial adrenalin rush had just started to wear off, and this provided a fresh dump for my system. "What the . . .?" A lot of voices on the radio, trying to figure out if someone was hurt, and if a booby trap had been tripped, or what, when finally Jack came in on the command channel. He was an SF medic on my team, and was a firefighter-paramedic in the civilian world: "That was a propane gas tank cooking off. Nothing to worry about." The fire the AF started in the kitchen? It had burned through the roof, and was now blowing up the propane gas cylinders they used to cook with. Two or three more went up over the next hour.

Finally, with all that behind us, I settled down to keep an eye on the compounds across the way. I suddenly realized how thirsty I was, and reached for the Camelback hose over my left shoulder to get a drink. I sucked, and nothing happened; sucked harder and still nothing. I pulled the camelback off my back - the hose and bite valve were completely frozen. Fortunately, I had an old school 2-quart canteen on my rucksack, and didn't have to wait for dawn to thaw the Camelback just to get a drink.