Why are members of Congress listening to idiots like Mike Yon?

I have been largely silent on the recent topic in the news about arming MEDEVACS and removing the red crosses painted on them. This all started with a self-loving douche named Mike Yon.

Let me be clear, Mike Yon was in the Army. He was in Special Forces for a short-time period. Actually his time in the Army was short. He also killed a man in bar-fight right after earning his Green Beret. Good for him for his short service, at least it was service. Shame on him for bringing embarrassment to the Army for killing a civilian in a bar-fight. He never served in combat, but that is ok. There are many that have never served in combat.

So lets look at these credentials. He knows good military training, from back in the day. He also knows how to take another person’s life, granted not for good or justifiable reasons.

He has also been dis-embedded from multiple units in Afghanistan and is pretty much not being allowed back into country now to embed with anyone. It could be because he crosses over to what could be considered as unethical stories. He has been accused of violating operational security. He has also lashed out at any military command that does not allow him to embed (he did this with the Navy after the Japan disaster and the Army multiple times).

But like I said at least he has served. He belongs to a long list of great people that have served this country. However serving does not make you above the law, or perfect, or right in every situation. Just ask Lynddie England, Timothy McViegh, or Bradley Manning. They all have served in the Army. Does that make them great people that deserve respect regardless of what they have done? I think not.

Anyway, for some reason Mike Yon who has never served in combat, but has embedded with many military units in combat is now a subject matter expert on the use of MEDEVACS and how they are marked and what their mission is in combat. I have never played professional football but I have been to many games and have hours playing EA’s Madden football game on my computer and Xbox. That does not make me subject matter expert on how to play or what it is like or what plays to call. Just an analogy there on how stupid it is for anyone to listen to Mike Yon and his full-of-shit opinion about strategy and doctrine. He is nothing more than an arm-chair general who thinks he is in the “know” and is so full of himself that if he could get through life with making love to himself, I think he would. Continue reading →

Shooting school helping soldiers get better

There is not much in life better than a dead tango when you are in combat. Our soldiers are trained very well in how to kill them before they kill us, but that training is sometimes dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. Sometimes the time is not always available to get into more advanced shooting techniques and styles.

Watch this great video from the NRA on Gunsite Academy in Arizona and how once a year they invite military members out to take part in their advanced shooting courses free of charge. In my opinion, it is Gunsite’s way of making sure more of our guys come home and more of the Tangos don’t.

If it walks like a duck…

I have written about US and coalition partners being killed in Afghanistan multiple times on this blog. More recently I have talked about it here and here.

Blogger “Crush” at blackfive.net also wrote about this recently but focused more on how the US military leadership has tried to somewhat hide the details of when our military sons and daughters are cut down by the “allies” we work to train befriend.

Head over to www.blackfive.net/main/2012/01/afghan-soldiers-killing-record-number-of-advisors.html and give it a read. One point he raises which I think needs emphasizing is that our military should be honest and straight with America and not have the New York Times or all outlets dig in and reveal the truth.

Is the National Guard back to being 2nd rate soldiers again?

Prior to 9/11 the National Guard was looked down upon by Active Duty forces. Since I served half my career in both both services I can tell you some of that was earned and some was just ignorance by active duty forces. When I was active duty we never took the National Guard (or as we sometimes called them “Nasty Guard, “No-Gos”, or “Nasty Girls” ) seriously. They never trained as hard as us, had as good equipment as us, or were as disciplined and professional soldiers as us.

However that was while I was active and I only had limited visibility of the National Guard and well, that visibility was not always good. Once I came into the National Guard I found there were many professional and technically expert soldiers who called the National Guard home. I have served with some awesome and highly motivated soldiers in the National Guard and I have also seen some pieces of crap (both soldiers and leaders). However I had also sen plenty of bad soldiers when I was active duty too.

After 9/11 the game changed, the “weekend warrior” was dead once our op-tempo kicked into high gear overseas while we also took on many new unforseen homeland security responsibilities. In 2003 my company deployed to NYC 3 times with two times having less than 12 hours notice. Think about that for a second. One day my soldiers left their campuses, cubicles, work-places, etc. thinking they were going home for the night and would be back the next day only to get a phone call telling them to bring any gear they had from home and report to the armory. I remember being on a bus to NYC handing my cell phone to soldiers so they could tell their bosses they would not be in to work and were not sure when they would be back. In addition to those homeland deployments, we also went to Germany for 3 weeks to help train up an active duty Brigade for an Iraq deployment and we were alerted 4-5 times ourselves for deployment. The last alert in November of 2003 finally came to fruition and most of the company deployed in January 2004. Continue reading →

Dropping the D from PTSD

The president of the American Psychiatric Association says he is “very open” to a request from the Army to come up with an alternative name for post-traumatic stress disorder so that troops returning from combat will feel less stigmatized and more encouraged to seek treatment.

Dr. John Oldham, who serves as senior vice president and chief of staff at the Houston-based Menninger Clinic, said he is looking into the possibility of updating the association’s diagnostic manual with a new subcategory for PTSD. The subcategory could be “combat post-traumatic stress injury,” or a similar term, he said.

“It would link it clearly to the impact and the injury of the combat situation and the deployment experience, rather than what people somewhat inaccurately but often assume, which is that you got it because you weren’t strong enough,” Oldham said.

The potential change was prompted by a request from Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army’s vice chief of staff, who wrote to Oldham last year, suggesting APA drop the world “disorder” from PTSD.

I am not going to say this came from me, however there are some interesting things that have happened in the past of which I am connected to. I have been saying for about four years that we should NOT use the “D” in PTSD for every soldier that has been diagnosed. I have made this statement in many public forums with the argument that people can suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress without having a disorder. I commonly call it PTS or more recently I have seen it called PTSS for Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Continue reading →

The pot calling the kettle black-UPDATED

Image courtesy of www.bigstockphoto.com

That was the saying I grew up with when one person or group accused another of something that the original party was known to be guilty of.

Afghan investigators accused the American military Saturday of abusing detainees at its main prison in the country, bolstering calls by President Hamid Karzai for the U.S. to turn over control of the facility and complicating talks about America’s future role in Afghanistan.

The investigators also called for any detainee held without evidence to be freed, putting the U.S. and Afghan governments on a collision course in an issue that will decide the fate of hundreds of suspected Taliban and al-Qaida operatives captured by American forces and held indefinitely.

I read this over the weekend and was floored. I could not believe that anyone in the Afghan Government could honestly make this kind of accusation with a straight face. This is a country that essentially has no military justice system so they lock up their soldiers for infractions in the same place that they lock up detainees, in a Conex container. A standard shipping container with no power, toilet, heat, etc. Yes when a commander wants to punish a soldier or group of soldiers they lock them up in there for hours to days at a time.

If they capture enemy on the battlefield and they can’t easily get them back for interrogation the Afghan Army (and I assume some of the police) lock them up in the same type of location.

Karzai took Washington by surprise Thursday when he ordered that the U.S. military turn over full control of the prison outside Bagram Air Base within one month, a seemingly impossible deadline given U.S. security concerns about the prisoners and the Afghan government’s weak administrative capacity. The countries had been working on phasing a transfer of responsibility of the prison, which hold 3,000 detainees, over two years.

Not only do they lock them up in conex container, among other places but they also abuse them worse then I have ever heard about in this country. This is abuse I have seen first-hand. Continue reading →

Why is Santa so cool…

Because he is a Jumpmaster of course.

Airborne All the Way Santa….