Check this out!

I’m sure no one there is complaining about Global Warming….

Stream of conscious moment….

Imagine a world where any military member of the US Armed Forces should not have any thoughts of comments on “moral” matters.

So the Democrats and gay groups run General Pace over the coals for hurting their feeling about having sex. Some connected thoughts:

• General Pace also said adultery is immoral behavior. I didn’t see any press releases from adultery advocacy groups, berating the most senior officer of the Nation and demanding an apology. What’s up with that?
• General Pace sated nothing more than is codified in US Code and Executive Orders. Now, because it “offends” those who somehow think they have a right to do whatever they want, then demand the rest of us actually “accept” the whatever. So, sounds like we don’t want to follow the law anymore, because it hurts feelings. Wow, this line of thought has some real legs, doesn’t it?
• I’m confused. The “world” seemed upset when Iraqi men had to parade around naked, and possibly there was some inappropriate use of chem lights one night at Abu Gharib prison. Weren’t the US Army, the military in general and the President raked over the coals for months on end for such immoral behavior? It certainly wouldn’t have been an issue if the soldiers, in their boredom, had exercised some critical thinking skills that night, all centered on whether it was moral or immoral to carry out their photographed behavior.
• How about that little “incident” at Haditha? More hollering and conviction on the World’s stage of the media, as well as from the mouth of a Congressman, regarding the what has been called immoral behavior (even before the legal system has the through review allowed those military personnel charged) of the Marine patrol.

It sure seems the Democrats and their trained attack dogs in the media can try to force the military to keep from making moral decisions, yet, they don’t understand it is the moral judgment of men and women wearing the uniform on a moment to moment basis that keeps them safe, and prevents far worse things from happening.

On the other hand, maybe the intent is to categorize the areas in which military members are supposed to have or not have morals. This will lend itself to allowing “protected groups,” be they CAIR or homosexuals, or environmentalists, etc, etc, to dictate when there should be no passing of moral judgment. This, on top of helping feeling not to be hurt would also spawn economic growth, as “consulting firms” would rise to the challenge to provide seminars and training for those in uniform.

Maybe “they” just want no judgment about sexual related issues. Ok, get ready for good times rock and roll and don’t “you” dare complain when public officials are caught “in the act” during working hours, for….with that implied issue might come “morality.” Back to my oft used quote: “Be careful when you set a precedent, for you never know when you will have to live by it yourself.”

You either want the military with a moral compass, or have them throw it to the wind and then get what you asked for. The good part, is the ingrained foundational standards are what will keep a military from collapsing on itself into a bunch of ambivalent individuals, who are paralyzed into inaction by the voices who have no clue of the protection they receive from the very exercise of moral decision making.

Quite honestly, it’s becoming sickening to me that no one stands up and explains the statement is nothing more than what Federal statues and regulations already require.

If you don’t like it, gather many billions of dollars and get yourself elected, then try to bend the will of the people of the United States. It’s your right, it’s your option, and in this great land, if you are a native American, over 35, it can be yours, regardless of your background. If enough follow you, then you, too, can take a shot at actually doing something, rather than sitting back and sniping at those who have been placed in office to be in charge of such matters.

/rant

The customer base is overactive this week, which is a good thing, but, cuts into blogging time.

Besides the superior trackbacks you readers might send, I refer you to a post I wrote after finding a comment on another blog. The title: “How to Bury a Hero” by (then) HM3 James Pell.

In the spirit of the movie “300,” some reminder from a modern day Spartan on how to lay your comrade to rest.

James, last I could track him down, made HM2 (Petty Officer Second Class Corpsman), but his email address wasn’t working. About 6 months ago, a friend of Marine LCpl Antoine Smith sent me an email after finding the post linked above, asking how to get a hold of James, so she could thank him. I sent out a few queries and was able to get a lead for her.

It’s all about connections and relationships, when you peel all else away.

It’s almost like this could be in the WaPo or NYT any day now…

Dateline: Washington, DC March 14th, 2007

Congress, acting quickly on their success of changing when Daylight Savings Time goes into effect wasted no time in trumpeting their resounding success: The US is noticing a cooling “climate change” and Speaker of the House Pelosi wants people to know it was her push to change daylight saving time which actually accounts for the cooling seen last month as well, that made this happen.

To continue the trend is establishing a downward track of US temperatures, several House and Senate committees have been holding hearings on how a change in the Law of Gravity would further reduce the production of greenhouse gases. Initial response from the public has been over the top positive, says a new USA Today poll, showing a solid 92.7% of all those living in the US (includes, but did not identify by name and address illegal aliens responding) think it would be “a great idea” to reduce gravity by 25%, while another 5.2% would support the President signing a bill that had a long term reduction equal to 20%, implemented over a 10 year period, rather than a large cut all at once.

Harry Reid (D-NV), at a press conference to announce the bill he was sponsoring, the Unified Gravity Reduction Bill of 2007, told the fawning Washington Press Corps the change in gravity would reduce the amount of fuel needed for all sorts of transportation, therefore, a reduction of greenhouse gases would be achieved and the planet would once again find itself cooling off, possibly as early as August 2008, in time for all American citizens to see how once more, the Democrats have been real problem solvers, while the President did noting by try to make more pollution with his tax cuts, that encouraged economic growth and manufacturing.

While most Americans seem fine with this measure, “non-weight challenged” citizens voiced displeasure with the plan, one man outside on the Capitol steps, a short, skinny, buck-toothed redneck looking idiot, held up a handmade sign with this inscription: “Reduce Gravity and What’s Next? Slowing Down the Speed of Light?” In an interview off the record, this rube had the audacity to question the wisdom of such a great and obviously spectacular bill being forwarded by Congress. He must have been expelled from elementary school for carrying a licensed firearm and missed his environmental science lessons. He went on to say, if the trend caught on, since most Americans are “weight challenged” (his words of “d*** obese” have been changed as to not offend anyone who is too lazy to stop eating), if they chose to reduced gravity even more, he and the other skinny people would be the first to suffer “unintended consequences” by being blown away in a stiff wind. He went on to comment that fat people just liked the idea because their excess wouldn’t be pulled down so hard and for once in their lives they could claim “normal” weight values on such documents as medical insurance applications, while staying reasonable affixed to the earth, even in strong winds. Not stopping there, he said some of his weight lifter friends were complaining about how people who never had set foot in a gym would soon be able to lift like they have been all along, drawing a parallel to Barry Bonds taking steroids just so he could pound the ball out of the park all the time: It’s an artificial advantage and is an uneven playing field.

Not everyone is happy with this measure, which will benefit the entire world, even if the law is only placed in effect in America to begin. While 90% of the scientists are in consensus that this is a good thing to do, there are almost a full 10% who have taken a hard line of junk science saying mankind has no way to reduce or eliminate gravity at a whim or the placing of some ink on paper. It can be done for short periods, but they say it requires a significant expenditure of energy, thereby negating any savings of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Several well known scientists have refuted these types of statements, calling them part of the outcasts in the science community and labeling them as “reality physics deniers.”

Al Gore, was not available for comment, but his spokesperson said he was holding a conference with the Boards of Directors of the company he currently purchases carbon credits from before he makes any press releases on his position.

One organization that is heralding such a measure passing as “great news for us” is the United States Parachute Association (USPA). A boon for jumpers and pilots alike, getting to altitude will take less energy and jump ticket prices should start dropping, which, as the USPA Executive Director, Chris Needles, projects will “begin to increase our stagnant membership numbers, as jumping becomes more affordable for more people and experienced jumpers will love being able to put 25% more freefall time in their logbooks per jump!”

The United Nations Secretary General, while not yet making a full statement, has been heard discussing with his staff if this might give the US an advantage over the other nations of the world, further having the appearance the at the US is “going it alone, without testing this new idea in the Court of World Opinion.” He also has wondered out loud if this measure might be looked upon as a leadership in global environmentalism and actually be a good idea for the rest of the world to try. The ambassadors for both China and India were heard to be protesting that they might be subject to any such rules in a working group of the Security Council this afternoon, fearing it might somehow cut into their productivity and fight to reach economic parity with the US.

President Bush, the worst President in the history of the US, was asked about this new proposal during his press conference where he was falsely claiming how the Surge in Iraq was already quickly reducing violence and civil unrest, said he wasn’t sure what gravity current was rated at, once more demonstrating what a shrub he is.

V(oice) A(ctivated) L(aptops for) OUR-I(njured) T(roops), in case you need a briefing…

The program continues, providing assistance to those wounded and unalbe to use a keyboard, permanently, or while undergoing rehab. Laptops with voice activated software provides a link, that many of us take for granted, withour ease of access to the internet and a keyboard.

If you have a few spare doallrs, might you consider a donation now, and periodically in the future for this great cause?

Oh, and my ad for the project: 100% of the donations go directly to the cost of hardware and software. Not a lick of “overhead” or “administrative” cost burden this endeavor, for the rest is “all-volunteer,” just like our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and coast guards.

“Second Place Failure”

Hmmm…gonna have to think about that one for a bit….

BUT! More importantly….Have you registered for the 2007 MilBlogs Conference yet? You snooze, you lose! Pony up your $40 now, before the first 100 slots are gone!….

Trackbacked @: Third World County

It’s not been pretty, reading editorials from CPU Magazine and Maximum PC regarding the operating system new to the market….

One of the editorialists happen to be the man who brought us DirectX as a Microsoft employee. Credibility in my book.

Long story short: It drags down your hardware (therefore, get ready to do major upgrades), it assumes there is much piracy and takes a very “conservative” look for DRM (digital rights management)….and now, I find out when visiting Bad Vista that it seems many mainstream programs will require an upgrade (read…more $$$ out of your pocket). Also, it seems Vista isn’t doing well with many games.

Seems to me the “complete re-writing” of the OS has left the run of the mill MS user in quite a quandary…stick with XP (better buy a copy if you’re planning on building a new system, MS doesn’t make it anymore), or dump a lot of cash for the OS upgrade (BTW, XP Pro will not upgrade to Vista Home Premium), then more into more memory (512M is the absolute bottom amount you can have, with 4GB (can you say “$350+, Thank you Mister Gates!”) being the “sweet spot”), and then….possibly have to buy upgrades to business programs.

Toss into the punch bowl a friend of mine recently hired his first employee and bought a system for the new guy and figured he’d just get two to establish a baseline. They came with Vista and he couldn’t use his Canon printers. Canon techs told him they can’t get drivers to work, so either buy new printers, or drop back to XP. He also had some problems with QuickBooks Pro 2005 not being able to run. Net result of this first person report: Scrubbed the drives and installed XP.

Bad Vista looks like a place to keep up with the latest gouge and get a few giggles for you Mac guys, too….

I’m sure the business world isn’t gonna be happy….

Trackbacked @: Third World County

Distributed computing has become a valuable tool in analyzing masses of data. One of the first was the SETI@Home project (about 2.7M years of computing time has been used on this effort), which needed help searching through the volumes of collected radio spectrum data pulled down. Since that project modeled a method to use other computers across a large area network to assist in culling through the info, there are now protein folding project at Stanford University. Here’s what they say the work is for:

Our goal: to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases

What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease? Proteins are biology’s workhorses — its “nanomachines.” Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or “fold.” The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.

Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. “misfold”), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

You can help by simply running a piece of software. Folding@Home is a distributed computing project — people from through out the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer makes the project closer to our goals.

Folding@Home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems thousands to millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.

From the “Results” page, what the project has accomplished already:

2005 First results from Folding@Home cancer project published. We have been studying the p53 tumor surpressor and our first results on p53 have recently been published. You can find a summary and link to the paper on our papers page.

If you’re a biology geek, or have an interest in Intelligent Design, there is some really interesting information about proteins at the Stanford site on using anoantubes and the information for help design drugs absed on this research.

Who’s playing? Lookee here!

Just an recommendation to use some of that electricity wisely while you’re not actively using the CPU cycles for your direct use…

Tracked back @: Third World County

This post stuck to the top for a while….newer posts will follow until I remove the “stick.”
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They say it clearly. We can’t grasp it as a country, much less as the Western World. Scary, telling, insightful, yet some have known this all along. Bolding in the quoted article below is mine for emphasis. Read and be educated.

Iraq: Jihadist Perspectives on a U.S. Withdrawal

By Fred Burton
www.stratfor.com

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution to express disapproval of the president’s plan to send more troops to Iraq. Republicans in the Senate prevented a similar resolution from coming to the floor for a vote the next day. The congressional actions come during a period of vigorous debate about U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan — a debate that is being heavily fueled as presidential hopefuls from both parties begin to position themselves for the 2008 election.

Naturally, this internal debate and media coverage have focused on the American perspective — and, more specifically, on public opinion polls. But often missing in that discussion is the fact that Afghanistan and Iraq were not entered into as self-contained discrete wars, but as fronts in the wider U.S.-jihadist war. Therefore, though the Bush administration’s troop strategy, the positioning of the Democrats and the anti-war statements of potential presidential contenders are by no measure unimportant, the intense focus on these issues means that another important perspective on the war — that of the jihadists — frequently goes unmentioned.

Al Qaeda leaders and the jihadist movement in general always have taken a long view of the war, and discussion of a U.S. withdrawal from either Iraq or Afghanistan has long been anticipated. In planning the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda leaders clearly expected that the United States, once drawn into a war, eventually would weaken and lose heart. A study of al Qaeda’s philosophy, mindset and planning — conveyed through the words and actions of its leadership — is a reminder of just how the current U.S. political debate fits into the jihadist timeline and strategy.

It also is an indicator that a U.S. withdrawal from Muslim lands is not al Qaeda’s ultimate requirement for ending attacks against the United States or American interests abroad.

Perceptions of American Resolve

Long before the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Osama bin Laden clearly stated that, in the jihadists’ opinion, the United States was not prepared to fight a war of attrition.

Prior to 9/11, bin Laden’s public statements conveyed his dim view of the U.S. military’s capabilities and resolve, as well as of the willingness of the U.S. government (and to a larger extent, the American people) to take casualties in a sustained war. In a 1997 interview with Peter Arnett, bin Laden said, “We learned from those who fought [in Somalia] that they were surprised to see the low spiritual morale of the American fighters in comparison with the experience they had with the Russian fighters. The Americans ran away from those fighters who fought and killed them, while the latter were still there. If the U.S. still thinks and brags that it still has this kind of power even after all these successive defeats in Vietnam, Beirut, Aden, and Somalia, then let them go back to those who are awaiting its return.”

It is widely believed that the U.S. withdrawal from Lebanon, following the 1983 Marine barracks bombing, and from Somalia in 1993 were important precedents in driving the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. The jihadists believed that if they killed enough Americans, U.S. forces would leave Saudi Arabia.

Bin Laden’s opinion of U.S. resolve was not shaken by the “shock and awe” campaign that was unleashed in Afghanistan and, later, Iraq. In a February 2003 message, he said, “We can conclude that America is a superpower, with enormous military strength and vast economic power, but that all this is built on foundations of straw. So it is possible to target those foundations and focus on their weakest points which, even if you strike only one-tenth of them, then the whole edifice will totter and sway, and relinquish its unjust leadership of the world.”

Bin Laden and other jihadist strategists often have stressed that the U.S. economy is one of the foundations to be attacked. However, another significant — and in their view, vulnerable — target is morale. In an October 2002 statement, marking the first anniversary of the Afghanistan invasion, bin Laden discussed the importance of “the media people and writers who have remarkable impact and a big role in directing the battle, and breaking the enemy’s morale, and heightening the Ummah’s morale.”

He also noted that the Americans had failed to achieve their objectives in Afghanistan, saying, “The invading American forces in Afghanistan have now started to sink in the Afghani mud, with all of their equipment and personnel. The weird irony of the matter is that the Crusader forces, which came to protect the governing system in Kabul from the attacks of the mujahideen, have now come to need the protection of the regime’s forces, having been dealt continuous blows by the mujahideen, so who protects who? The international and American forces had come to ensure the security [but] have become the biggest burden to security!!”

Orders given by Mullah Omar and his tactical commanders to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan also reflect this mindset. They are told not to go toe-to-toe with coalition forces in battle, but rather to increase the costs of doing battle in order to hasten the withdrawal of Western forces.

An al Qaeda military strategist and propagandist, Abu Ubeid al-Qurashi, expounded on this concept in an article titled “Fourth-Generation Wars,” carried by the organization’s biweekly Internet magazine, Al Ansar, in February 2002:

“Fourth-generation warfare, the experts said, is a new type of war in which fighting will be mostly scattered. The battle will not be limited to destroying military targets and regular forces, but will include societies, and will seek to destroy popular support for the fighters within the enemy’s society. In these wars, the experts stated in their article, ‘television news may become a more powerful operational weapon than armored divisions.’ They also noted that ‘the distinction between war and peace will be blurred to the vanishing point.'”

Al-Qurashi went on to extol jihadist successes in fourth-generation warfare, in settings ranging from Afghanistan to Somalia. He also noted that, like the Soviet Union, the United States was not well-suited to fight that type of war. And he predicted that al Qaeda’s ideal structure for, and historical proficiency in, fourth-generation warfare ultimately would secure its victory — despite the fact that jihadists were outgunned by the Americans in both types and quantities of weapons. Al-Qurashi said that while the U.S. military was designed and equipped with the concept of deterrence in mind — that is, to deter attacks against the United States — the guiding principle was not applicable in the struggle against a nonstate actor like al Qaeda.

“While the principle of deterrence works well between countries, it does not work at all for an organization with no permanent bases and with no capital in Western banks that does not rely on aid from particular countries. As a result, it is completely independent in its decisions, and it seeks conflict from the outset. How can such people, who strive for death more than anything else, be deterred?” he wrote.

In contrast, al Qaeda’s leaders persistently have exhorted their followers to fight a war of attrition similar to that successfully waged by the mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan. In bin Laden’s words, “We don’t articulate and we don’t quit.”

One principle that has been emphasized in many statements by bin Laden and others is that the jihadists love death the way Americans love life — a concept originally stated by Abu Bakr, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, as he led an army into battle against the Persians.

A Four-Part Strategy

The United States’ military response to the 9/11 attacks was the reaction al Qaeda wanted and expected. The statements of al Qaeda leaders have made it clear that the jihadists’ goal was to make sure these became protracted, painful and costly wars.

Ayman al-Zawahiri put it this way in August 2003, as the insurgency in Iraq was beginning to take hold: “We are saying to America one thing: What you saw with your eyes so far are only initial skirmishes; as for the real battle, it hasn’t even started yet.”

Now, whether al Qaeda or the jihadist movement actually retains the capability to achieve its long-term goals is a matter for vigorous debate, and one we have explored at other times. For purposes of this analysis, however, it is useful to examine just what those long-term goals, to which al-Zawahiri obviously was alluding, actually are.

Internal al Qaeda documents indicate that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan is but one of the stages factored into the movement’s long-term planning. One of the most telling documents was a July 2005 letter from al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, outlining a four-step strategy for establishing a caliphate in the “heart of the Islamic world.” (The authenticity of the al-Zawahiri letter has been questioned by some, but our own analysis has led Stratfor to conclude it was bona fide.)

The steps he outlined were:
1) Expel the Americans from Iraq.
2) Establish an Islamic authority or emirate in Iraq.
3) Extend the jihad wave to secular countries neighboring Iraq.
4) Initiate a clash with Israel.

Al-Zawahiri said he was proposing the four-step strategy in order to “stress something extremely important” to al-Zarqawi, “and it is that the mujahideen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal.” He clearly wanted the jihadists to press on toward bigger objectives following the U.S. withdrawal.

In the letter, he cautioned: “Things may develop faster than we imagine. The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam — and how they ran and left their agents — is noteworthy. Because of that, we must be ready starting now, before events overtake us, and before we are surprised by the conspiracies of the Americans and the United Nations and their plans to fill the void behind them. We must take the initiative and impose a fait accompli upon our enemies, instead of the enemy imposing one on us, wherein our lot would be to merely resist their schemes.”

It follows from this that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be construed by the jihadists as an opportunity to establish an important base or sanctuary — and then to consolidate their gains and continue their “jihad wave” to other parts of the region. With that in mind, jihadist attacks against “Jews and Crusaders” could be expected to continue even after a U.S. departure from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Ultimate Objective

Al Qaeda’s grievances with the United States have been well documented by Stratfor and numerous others since the 9/11 attacks: Bin Laden was outraged by the presence of U.S. military forces in Saudi Arabia following the 1991 Gulf War, and by what he sees as an unholy alliance between Western powers and “apostate” secular regimes in the Islamic world. Historical conflicts between Muslim and Christian entities also have been referenced as a precedent for what bin Laden describes as “aggressive intervention against Muslims in the whole world” — meaning the U.N. embargo against Iraq, the existence of Israel and U.S. support for said “apostate” regimes.

In a February 1998 statement, bin Laden declared that “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the Al Aqsa mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.

An important point is that al Qaeda defines terms like the “lands of Islam” as territory that includes present-day Israel, India and Spain. While Israel is clearly more significant to Muslims than other areas, given the importance of Jerusalem and the Al Aqsa mosque to Islam, Spain — which was the Caliphate of al-Andalus from 711 to 1492 — is also in the crosshairs. An equally important point is that the political shift in Madrid (which followed a 2004 commuter train attack in the capital) and the government’s decision to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq have not removed Spain from the jihadists’ target list. In a July 2006 message — in which he threatened revenge for the Israeli aggression against Lebanon and the Palestinians — al-Zawahiri said, “The war with Israel … is a jihad for the sake of God … a jihad that seeks to liberate Palestine, the whole of Palestine, and to liberate every land which (once belonged to) Islam, from Andalus to Iraq.”

In other words, at least as long as the state of Israel exists — and the “apostate” governments in places like Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Morocco and Kuwait remain in power, with U.S. support — the jihadists will continue to complain about U.S. “aggression against Islam.” And, insofar as they are able, they will carry on their war.

This report may be distributed or republished with attribution to Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com.

This analysis, using their own words, tells us there is the multi-generational war in the wings. The age of instant gratification/Desert Storm type “wins” aren’t going to be a reasonable expectation.

Is this a surprise to many? Maybe the link should be sent to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Note the expectation of us ending this war in Iraq just as we did in Vietnam. My, my, my! So the Democrats in power are playing right into their plans, which would show the Democrats cannot understand their role on the larger stage of the World, then and now…

Posted in Little Green Footballs comment section….
H/T: Diary of a Mad Pidegon, Samantha Burns

Back when Jack Army was still in the Army recruiting business, I asked him what was allowed to give to Recruiters. I know back in my dark ages, there was a $4.95 retail value limit on “gifts,” which was revised to be something more intelligent just before I retired in 96. I thought the troops at the local station might enjoy a pizza or something like that, but I wanted to make sure so they weren’t in an uncomfortable position, If I sent a few large pizzas to their door. Not worth losing a career/position over. He gave me permission to provide some info extracted from his two emails.

“Jack” is a busy man and currently in the later part of his deployment to Iraq, but he made time to answer up. I got an answer I think we all might be able to give the overworked recruiters with:

As for your question, what is acceptable for a recruiter to accept? Certainly an occasional pizza will be heartily received and small tokens like that are fine. I don’t believe there is a regulation prohibiting recruiters from receiving gifts from private citizens, most would be too humble to receive much more than pizza and a soda or something similar.

I would tell you that the one thing that you could give a recruiter that would mean more than anything is a solid lead. A name and phone number of some young man or woman that would benefit from what the Army has to offer… you would have Army coffee cups, pens, desk calendars and just about any other lickies and chewies USAREC throws out there coming out of your ears!

I don’t need another coffee cup, but I think the recruiters could appreciate just what he asked for: Solid leads. Put your networking hats on, and get back into service, being an advocate for military service and the recruiters. We know they have problems in some areas getting into schools and universities, so complimenting their work would be a big boost for them. Keep your ears to the tracks and listening for that opportunity in a conversation to guide someone their way….and, just if you have the urge, maybe stop by with some coffee or donuts or pizza for them and tell them they are doing a great job.

Now, news from Iraq from “Jack:”

It has been a fast and furious time since about August 2005. As you probably know, I’m currently in Iraq. Things are going really well in our area of operations. Our Iraqi Army counterparts are progressing well and things in this zone are relatively quiet compared to zones on our borders. There are great things happening every day but there is still so much work to be done.

Somehow I don’t get the same picture from the MSM….so, from real boots on the ground, a senior NCO says it’s better.

While I tend to paint a rosy picture of things here (I am an optimist!), there are challenges. Corruption has been a problem. For example, Iraqi Army Soldiers and Iraqi Police officers used to demand bribes to get through some of the checkpoints in our area. The Iraqi Army commander here had signs put up at the checkpoints with his phone number on them stating that bribes where illegal and call the number to report IA or IP who demanded them. Also, obviously, he ordered the practice to be stopped as well. After he put the first violator in jail for a few days and took away a few days’ pay, that practice pretty much went away. Now, the only folks that will get hassled at a checkpoint is those that are suspicious or violate the law. Things are getting better.

Sounds like someone sees it’s time for a change, and it’s great to hear that the Iraqi officer is taking the lead in solving a problem.

Update 3/9/2007: In this “news” is the subtle message that changes, meaning it will take a while to change attitudes, as the poulation ages/dies off. At MilBlogs, Soldier’s Dad makes this point, but uses the Russian model and the memory of WWII as the example. The human experience, it’s new and it’s old, more times and ways that we like to imagine….

So, the recruiters are in the fight, too. Help them out if you get the chance.

Crossposted at: Third World County
Tracked back at: Woman, Honor Thyself, High Desert Wanderer, Big Dogs Weblog, Right Voices, Samantha Burns, Cao’s Blog