No, I did not get the recruit haircut. I’ve done the military barber thing, and nothing makes you feel loved like your mom saying “your head looks weird.”

Hardest thing for recruits to handle: see story.
Recruiting guidelines for the Marines are very strict. I’m considering applying to see if I even qualify for a follow up story.
The acronym award goes to the Navy, hands down.

No Marine in his right mind would say anything bad about the commander-in-chief. Regardless of their feelings.

To Jenny, I’ll have to ask. That’s a new one!
But I HAVE seen your brother. Read the story published on Thursday!

That’s all, folks. We leave tomorrow. If you have any questions for Joshua Knowles, a graduate from Rutherford, let me know.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

By Anthony Shadid

Friday, January 2, 2009; Page A01

Washington Post Foreign Service

BAGHDAD — Maybe it was the only shot heard for days in a neighborhood once ordered by the cadence of gunfire. Perhaps it was the smiles at checkpoints and the shouts of Iraqi policemen navigating the always snarled traffic. “God’s mercy on your parents,” they beseeched. “God’s blessings on you.” Maybe it was the music box still playing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” at a kiosk overflowing with Christmas tree decorations and heart-shaped red pillows.

For anyone returning to Baghdad after spending time here during its darkest days two years ago, when it was paralyzed by sectarian hatred and overrun by gunmen sowing despair, the conclusion seemed inescapable.

“The war has ended,” said Heidar al-Abboudi, a street merchant.

The war in Iraq is indeed over, at least the conflict as it was understood during its first five years: insurgency, communal cleansing, gangland turf battles and an anarchic, often futile quest to survive. In other words, civil war — though civil war was always too tidy a term for it. The entropy, for now at least, has run its course. So have many of the forces the United States so dangerously unleashed with its 2003 invasion, turning Iraq into an atomized, fractured land seized by a paroxysm of brutality. In that Iraq, the Americans were the final arbiter and, as a result, deprived anything they left behind of legitimacy.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

Why does the Ball Gunner like the Germans? Because not only is their Santa for the good, there is a counter Santa. His name is Krampus. Have you been good little Ball Gunners? I certainly hope so. If not, Krampus will come:

Merry Christmas.

God bless us everyone, including those blood drinking Ostrogoths.

The Ball Gunner will return next week and, get this, actually start UPDATING again!

Post from: The Ball Gunner

Needless to say, for any ship captain sailing the full bore pucker patrol anywhere along eastern or southern Africa there’s not much room for thinking sweetly of dreamy pirates, not when the problem has gotten so bad even the world’s navies don’t know what to do about it.

The Saudis chose to negotiate. The Indian navy opened fire. The U.S. navy said shipping companies should do more to protect their vessels, and the ship owners said governments should guard the high seas.

But everyone wants the barely functioning government of Somalia to control the pirates who sail from its ports to seize the cargo ships and tankers that ply past.Mightily armed, but slightly baffled, 21st century civilization appears to have no collective answer to piracy, a scourge once considered banished into history.

“These are not just unskilled bandits,” said Russian navy spokesman Igor Dygalo. “Most likely we are dealing with two or even three pirate syndicates planning these attacks. They have very good sea communications and they’re well armed.”

We’re dealing with a major reality disconnect, here. Asking the Somali government to project seapower would be like asking Lesotho to plan a mission to Mars. Somalia, like most of the African east coast, is at worse a largely stateless region and at best a batch of paralyzing incompetence. Sudan, Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania - any of these sound like a naval power, even a REGIONAL naval power? The only thing that comes close is Egypt, mostly because they’ve got a thin strip of Suez Canal to guard with the Saudis on the other side.

Piracy now, like piracy back in the Golden Age of Piracy (whatever that means), is a feature of waning governments and global strife.
From wikipedia:

In 1713, a succession of peace treaties was signed, known as the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession (also called ‘Queen Anne’s War‘). With the end of this conflict, thousands of seamen, including Britain’s paramilitary privateers, were relieved of military duty. The result was a large number of trained, idle sailors at a time when the cross-Atlantic colonial shipping trade was beginning to boom. In addition, Europeans who had been pushed by unemployment to become sailors and soldiers involved in slaving were often enthusiastic to abandon that profession and turn to pirating, giving pirate captains for many years a constant pool of trained European recruits to be found in west African waters and coasts.

Take a look at this map and tell me if you notice a trend. Sure, you get some outliers, but the majority of attacks are clustered around areas not exactly known for able governance. It gets even better when the government falls apart in areas like the Red Sea and the Straits of Malacca, there’s not much room to maneuver those big ships, tons of places to hide and lots and lots of poverty to help your recruiting numbers.

What’s really impressive about East Coast African piracy is that it’s actually well done. With all due respect to today’s editorial, comparing these guys to know-nothing carjackers or brainless thugs robs them of the respect they’ve earned. These guys are making piles of money and doing it bloodlessly. Take a ship, hold it and the crew ransom, wait to get paid, everyone goes home with an exciting story. Meanwhile the pirates get a pile of cash and a Robin Hood sort of image.

As Bad Religion once sang: Welcome to the new dark ages. We’re in a time when world militaries are in flux, power is contracting after more than 50 years of expanding. This sort of organized briganadge, which has never gone away, is only going to step up until someone steps in to fill the gap.

UPDATE:

I guess all is well. The Islam extremist figters from the Horn of Africa are going to save the day.

MOGADISHU, Somalia – A radical Islamic group in Somalia said Friday it will fight the pirates holding a Saudi supertanker loaded with $100 million worth of crude oil.

Abdelghafar Musa, a fighter with al-Shabab who claims to speak on behalf of all Islamic fighters in the Horn of Africa nation, said ships belonging to Muslim countries should not be seized.

In the past two weeks Somalia’s increasingly brazen pirates have seized eight vessels including the huge Saudi supertanker. Several hundred crew are now in the hands of Somali pirates.

The pirates dock the hijacked ships near the eastern and southern Somali coast and negotiate for ransom.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said Friday that the Saudi government was not and would not negotiate with pirates, but what the ship’s owners did was up to them.

The Ball Gunner’s official prediction:

Post from: The Ball Gunner

Georgia Claims on Russia War Called Into Question

Vano Shlamov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By C. J. CHIVERS and ELLEN BARRY

Published: November 6, 2008

TBILISI, Georgia — Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.

Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.

The accounts are neither fully conclusive nor broad enough to settle the many lingering disputes over blame in a war that hardened relations between the Kremlin and the West. But they raise questions about the accuracy and honesty of Georgia’s insistence that its shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, was a precise operation. Georgia has variously defended the shelling as necessary to stop heavy Ossetian shelling of Georgian villages, bring order to the region or counter a Russian invasion.

Related
Georgia Fired More Cluster Bombs Than Thought, Killing Civilians, Report Finds (November 6, 2008)

As a professional. I realize that we all make the occasional mistake. To the Times I offer this sentiment of journalistic understanding:

with much love to Bill Waterson.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

Part two

Part three

AM ranks up there as the gold standard of counter-insurgency. As much as the Ball Gunner doth loooove his litte corner of the Web, I am constantly reminded that I am small arms in a field of artillary.

Read up. With a little luck I’ll have something new and exciting to post in the next few days.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

But alas, that is past, and it is a new day. With new Ball Gunnings afoot!

There are so many targets for commentary, and the Ball Gunner’s ungrateful bosses keep hammering at him to do things that actually make money instead of writing on his blog, endlessly researching and watching old Scrubs reruns. It’s hard to do good work when you’re sooooo unappreciated, but the Ball Gunner strives ever forward.

There was a dandy of an article from the Wa Po - Lacking an accord on troops, U.S. and Iraq seek a plan B:

With time running out for the conclusion of an agreement governing American forces in Iraq, nervous negotiators have begun examining alternatives that would allow U.S. troops to stay beyond the Dec. 31 deadline, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

<!–
var rn = ( Math.round( Math.random()*10000000000 ) );
document.write(’<s\cript src=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/13/AR2008101302846_StoryJs.js?’+rn+’”></s\cript>’) ;
// –>

Neither side finds the options attractive. One possibility is an extension of the United Nations mandate that expires at the end of the year. That would require a Security Council vote that both governments believe could be complicated by Russia or others opposed to the U.S.-led war. Another alternative would amount to a simple handshake agreement between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Bush to leave things as they are until a new deal, under a new U.S. administration, can be negotiated.

What a hoot! There’s some serious cognitive dissonance going on in American policy rooms right now. No one is willing to consider what it will mean if America gets dumped only to have Iraq show up at the ball with it’s new squeeze - Iran. Never fear, the Ball Gunner will tell you EXACTLY what that would mean - a trillion dollars and thousands of coalition lives spent to gain the United States roughly nothing while sending Iran’s assets in the region through the roof.

I maintain we learn TWO things from history: 1) that we learn nothing from history 2) that history loves irony.

The Christian Science Monitor has a bizarre piece - Is the U.S. fighting force big enough?

American’s armed forces are growing bigger to reduce the strains from seven years of war, but if the US is confronting an era of “persistent conflict,” as some experts believe, it will need an even bigger military.

A larger military could more easily conduct military and nation-building operations around the world. But whether the American public has the appetite to pursue and pay for such a foreign-policy agenda, especially after more than five years of an unpopular war in Iraq, is far from clear.

If you were expecting a further discussion of the bits in italics - don’t hold your breath. Delusion number 2 is that the military budget has become sacrosanct in the post-Clinton years, and maybe the Pentagon gets their news from the sunshine station, but from the Ball Gunner’s seats the economy isn’t doing so hot. Even the most ardent flag waver is going to start asking questions about a near $650 billion dollar 2009 Defense Appropriations Act when the house has been repoed, the car is gone and the kids are sick - and not a country singer in sight.

The Monitor story lists the “target” expansion goals for the Army, 540 to 547,000 and the Marine Corps, expected to grow to 202,000, and then hauls in retired Lt.Col. John Nagl to serve up a big slice of pie in the sky and recommend the Army should add an additional 200,000 and the Marines another 50,000. Where he proposes to get these people and how he proposes to afford them are mysteries in the article. Needless to say, the size of the military will soon be shrinking, not growing. Patience in the U.S. for these little foreign ventures has evaporated.

Oh lord, there’s more to talk about. But the Ball Gunner really must get to work.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

If I’m feeling especially motivated I’ll make a post. Until then, see you in the funny papers.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

Colonel: SERE tactics used on Iraqi detainees

By Erik Holmes - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Sep 29, 2008 8:35:24 EDT

Air Force survival, evasion, resistance and escape, or SERE, experts from Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., advised special operations interrogators in Iraq on how to use harsh — and some would argue illegal — interrogation methods against detainees.

And on at least one occasion in 2003, they used their skills on an Iraqi detainee, according to testimony at a Thursday hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The interrogation of detainees extends far beyond SERE experts’ mission — teaching airmen and other military members to resist harsh interrogation techniques, according to testimony by Col. Steven Kleinman, an Air Force intelligence officer and interrogator.

“Survival instructors are not interrogators,” he said. “The legal, operational and even moral concerns about the employment of SERE methods went largely unrecognized.”

No big analysis today, folks. But if you want a solid look at the implications of this story I would recommend Malcom Nance’s brilliant piece in Small Wars Journal. The most telling excerpt:

What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

Thomas Friedman has written a satire so stuffed full with bad generalizations, misinformation and simplifications I’m surprised it didn’t find it’s way to a dartboard somewhere. I’ll haul out one choice morsel for you:

American taxpayers who would not let their money be used to subsidize their own companies — Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch — will not have their tax dollars used to subsidize your endless dithering over which Iraqi community dominates Kirkuk.

Gosh, Tom, way to simplify an ethnic dispute that has been raging for, oh, about 1400 years or so.

“Geeze, guys! Can’t you just get over it?! Just quit carping about repression this and genocide that and homeland and yak, yak, yak, yak, yak - YOU’RE GIVING ME A HEADACHE!”

Here’s a hint, Tom. Why don’t you rephrase that and replace “Kirkuk” with “Jerusalem” and tell me how high that particular baloon flies.

You Shiites have got to bring the Sunni tribes and Awakening groups, who fought the war against Al Qaeda of Iraq, into the government and Army. You Kurds have got to find a solution for Kirkuk and accept greater integration into the Iraqi state system, while maintaining your autonomy. You Sunnis in government have got to agree to elections so the newly emergent Sunni tribal and Awakening groups are able to run for office and become “institutionalized” into the Iraqi system.

Is that all. Wow, Tommie, you make it sound so simple.

Post from: The Ball Gunner