4/14/2005
Why the NRA Annoys Me Sometimes
Via the Barking Moonbat Early Warning System, we find this shirt from the NRA
Now, overall, I like the shirt. Good message, nice picture. But I have just one question: would it kill the NRA to, just once, put an AR-15, or an AK, or a FAL, or an M1A, on some item of merchandise? Embrace the rifles of the "well regulated militia" which is "the body of the people, trained to arms." And "arms" doesn't mean fowling pieces, Wayne.
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Ma Deuce's Diary-14 April 2005
Roadside bomb shatters dawning day
...
We were rolling south in a three-vehicle convoy down Route Bug, an increasingly dangerous stretch of dirt road leading south out of Baghdad, and the site of at least three roadside bomb attacks on U.S. troops in the previous 24 hours.
I remember vividly the brilliant flash of bright reds and deep, tangerine-colored orange outside my window.
I can still hear the loud crackle and the roar of the explosion, followed by a tremendous concussion that shook, raised off the ground and twisted the Humvee with no less force than if it had been broadsided by a speeding locomotive.
The rear passenger side area where I was seated took the brunt of the blast. It lifted me out of my seat, and sent my Kevlar-helmeted head into the roof.
Drive! Drive! Drive!
When I opened my eyes, I was on my side, staring out the opened driver’s side rear door. Rocky Mountain News photographer Todd Heisler, who had been there moments before, had been ejected by the blast, and lay on his back in the roadway, the careening Humvee barely missing him.
...
Note: this illustrates why, awkward as it may be, you should always wear your seatbelt and your kevlar. With my wife getting ready to deploy, reading stories like this aren't the best thing for my mental health. But I'm always trying to pick out tidbits to pass on to my wife and to the troops I train. Wear your seatbelt. Wear your eye protection. Stay away from parked, unoccupied cars.
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Iraq Is Not Vietnam
Via Instapundit comes a pointer to this StrategyPage article by Austin Bay on the failure of Al Qaeda's "Iraqi Tet" fantasy. Money quote:
Iraq, however, is no Vietnam. The Vietnam War was strategic defense, a bitter Cold War "battle of containment." The War on Terror is a strategic political and military offensive directed at the dictators and theocrats who rule by death squad and export terror -- and it's a war we are winning.
In a weird way, the MSM's constant beating of the "Iraq=Vietnam=Quagmire" drum may be doing us a favor-by making Zaqwari and his Al Qaeda chums believe in that fantasy. The fantasy which they appear to be basing their increasingly desparate strategy on. And basing an operational strategy on a fantasy is never a recipe for success. That's a good thing for us.
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4/13/2005
Does Such a Toy Exist?
I've recently learned some things about the job I'll be doing when I move to Fort Lewis this summer, and it's made me think that I need to move my personal portable audio equipment into the 21st century. (Currently, my personal audio options are an AM/FM radio or an ancient Aiwa tape cassette walkman purchased in the early 1990s, assuming I can find it, an assuming it would work if I can.)
After assessing what I want to be able to listen to (talk radio, to include Rush, SF Giants baseball games, and tunes from the several thousand dollars worth of CDs that I own), I've figured out what I need: an AM/FM/XM radio with MP3 player. The ability to play whatever audio I might be listening to through computer speakers would be a definite plus.
Trouble is, I've taken a quick look around, and I don't think such a machine is made.
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4/12/2005
More from the WA Gov'ner Election
HT: Sound Politics. King County lost the wrong ballot. Big time.
Thanks to Stefan's trusty voter database, most Washingtonians can quickly check to see if their ballot was counted in the last election, a resource that King County itself has not provided directly.
Lt. Bryan Suits, recently home from combat in Iraq, used it to discover that his general election absentee ballot was not counted. Actually, what he saw in the database search result was a hash mark... curious, he called King County elections, who confirmed that although his vote was counted in the primary, he was not credited with voting in the November election.
You ask: "maybe it didn't arrive in time?" Well, to ensure that it was counted, he had sent the completed absentee ballot to his wife (a police officer, by the way) who made sure it was in the postal system well in advance of election day.
Ballot belonging to a soldeir serving in a combat zone wasn't counted. Time to bring in the Federales.
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Giant Blog Battle Monsters
HT: Volokh
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Gotta Love It
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I'd Like to Thank All My Fans
Sometime after I left work yesterday I hit 25,000 visits on Sitemeter.
Thanks to everyone who comes by to read my random rantings and policy proposals (although I should do more of the latter-it's bad form to offer criticism without also offering solutions), especially all of you who leave comments.
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4/11/2005
Will Someone Please Tell the UN to STFU?
I haven't, up until now, said anything about the death of Pope Jaul Paul II. Not because I don't care-actually I find the stuff about papal succession and Church history quite interesting. Mostly because I didn't have antything to say that hadn't already been said by someone else. Also, I'm not Catholic, so I don't have any personal involvement in this.
That said, where the hell does the U.N. population chief get off telling the Catholic Chruch what its position should be on condoms?
The Catholic Church's opposition to condoms (as well as other artificial forms of birth control) is, to them, a matter of religious belief. I don't have a great background in theology or Biblical Scripture, but I do vaguely recall that somewhere in there is a passage that says something along the lines that spilling ones seed on the ground is bad. The Catholic Church inteprets this to mean that implements which cause ones seed to be thrown in the trashcan (condoms), or to shrivel up and die (the pill, etc), are bad. To the best of my knowledge, this has been the position of the Church for 2000 years now.
Funny how the U.N doesn't seem to feel the need to try to dictate on matters of religious belief to, say, Muslims. Like maybe telling them that they should stop treating rape victims as criminal adultresses, or maybe that killing members of other religions isn't God's will. But that would be culturally insensitive, so the U.N. doesn't do it.
The U.N. wants the Church to stop objecting to condoms to help fight the spread of AIDS. I won't deny that AIDS is a very serious problem. The Catholic Chruch doesn't deny it either. The Church advocates abstinence and marital fidelity to fight the spread of AIDS. Both of these techniques have proven 100% effective when faithfully practiced. But they don't fit the free love worldview of the elitist jerkoffs of the U.N.. So the U.N. feels the need to impress their vies on the Cathloic Church.
You know, I really wish that Mr. Atta had crashed that plane into a different Mahnattan building.
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I Have Been Remiss
Carnival of Cordite #8 has been up since Friday. Shame on me for not mentioning it.
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More MSM Undermining the War Effort and Recruiting
This story from the Seattle Times, is yet another in the line of pieces from the MSM trying to make it appear that the Iraqi campaign is unwinnable, and that the soldiers, or in this case Marines, don't want to fight it anymore. It also shows a decent bit of bias in what it omits, and shows a lack of research and also historical perspective.
The focus of the story is a Marine unit (3rd Battalion, 4th Marines) on their third tour in Iraq. Now, a unit being on a third rotation into Iraq surprised me a bit, since I'm sure no major Army unit is on anything more than their second trip (I'm not including SOCOM/CAPOC types in this. They're a, um, special case.) Then I saw this post at Castle Argghhh! and put it together. Marine units do 7 month tours in Iraq. Army unit tours are 12 months, and sometimes more. Given that the 3/4 Marines were involved in the initial invasion, went home, came back for a 7 month tour, went home again, and are now back, it's entirely possible that they have less total time in Iraq than some Army units that have only done a single extended tour. First Armored Division was literally turned around on the way to Kuwait to go home to Germany in order to subdue Najaf last year. They ended up spending a total of something like 15, maybe 16 months in Iraq. So I'm not entirely sure what these Marines' complaint is. I'm also not sure why the reported doesn't mention these facts, unless she either (A) didn't do her research; or (B), she's got an agenda, which wouldn't be served by mentioning these facts.
The article also mentions the deployments being hard on Marines with families, especially babies and young kids. I was under the impression that recurring 6 month sea tours were a common thing in the Marines, even in peacetime. Again, what are they complaining about? Also again, why doesn't the reporter mention this?
Also, from a historical perspective, the whole notion of 'combat tours' is a relatively recent phenomenon, originating during either Korea or Vietnam. During World War II, and in almost all of America's wars before that, units went to the front and stayed there until the war was over. In World War II my first unit, the 6th Infantry (Regulars, by God!) took part in Operation Torch, in November of 1942, fought across North Africa, then went on to fight in Sicily and up the Italian boot, remaining in combat until the war ended in May of 1945. That's just over 2 and half years of almost continuous fighting.
The final omission is the most glaring. Nowhere in the article will you find any mention of or quote by a Marine who intends to re-enlist. Every single Marine quoted wants to get out. I don't have hard numbers for the Marines, but the Army is currently exceeding its re-enlistment goals, at least in the active duty component. An educated guess would say the Marines are probably having similar success. So why doesn't the story have any quotes from those Marines? In this case, the omission almost has to be a case of bias. I find it impossible to believe that the reporter could hang out in a Marine unit and not speak to a single Marine who was planning to re-enlist. But those quotes wouldn't fit the reporter's worldview/agenda, so they don't make the story.
Unfortunately, the MSM does far too much of this sort of thing.
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Iraq Good News Roundup
Arthur Chrenkoff's biweekly roundup is out.
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The Captain's Fishing Program
Even in the ultra-Blue San Francisco Bay Area, there are some folks who appreciate what our troops are doing. From the SF Chronicle:
In a mission to reach out to Iraq war veterans, the Coastside Fishing Club of the Bay Area will host soldiers and their children for a day of fishing out of Half Moon Bay.
....
"The sacrifice they have made has not gone unnoticed by those in the fishing community and we want to say thank you in the way we know best," said Bruce Torquemada of Coastside, who is coordinating the events.
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