Archive for August, 2006
Would-Be Robber With Screwdriver Foiled
A customer carrying a gun foiled a man who attempted to rob a fast-food restaurant with a screwdriver in his pocket, police said.
I’m not completely sure I would pull my gun on a guy just stealing money from the fast food place I was eating at, but three cheers anyway.
The first Gun Blogger Rendezvous takes place in Reno in October. Gun bloggers, MilBloggers, and those who read them are all welcome. You need not be a blogger to attend.
Murdoc cannot make it, but he encourages you to go if you can. The list of those planning to be there looks impressive. Should be a great time.
It’s being organized by Mr. Completely. Mac & Dons pic designed by Kevin at The Smallest Minority.
From Iwo Jima to Icy Strait, the long, colorful history of the Acushnet
Ketchikan, Alaska:
The Ketchikan based cutter Acushnet celebrates its 60th birthday in the US Coast Guard this week, but it faces an uncertain future.
The Coast Guard is doing an environmental assessment on both the 62-year-old Acushnet and the 63-year-old Kodiak based cutter Storis. It hopes to decide in the next few months whether the ships should be surplused and whether or not other ships will be home-ported in Ketchikan and Kodiak to replace them.
The story of the Acushnet is simply amazing. Iwo Jima. Okinawa. Helped save the battleship USS Pennsylvania when the old lady was torpedoed two days before the end of the war. Daring rescues off the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts. The Mariel boat lift off of Cuba, including brinksmanship with Cuban gunboats intent on forcing an international incident. Then service on the Pacific coast and in Alaska.
Too much good stuff to excerpt. Go read.
Did they build ships back in those days, or what?
Artist Concept of the amphibious transport dock ship USS New York (LPD 21) in New York harbor. Provided by Naval Sea Systems Command (RELEASED)
Note the construction in the background and recall that this ship has steel from the Twin Towers in her keel. She is to be delivered in late 2007.
From Navy Newsstand.
John at OpFor: Has Iraq degenerated into Civil War?
Some decent discussion in the comments. My own entry:
It’s a civil war and has been for quite some time. But a low-intensity, guerrilla-type civil war.
The bad guys have taken the fight to the Iraqi military and police, and they’re backed and supported in the field by irregular paramilitary forces and terrorists.
A lot of the civilian-on-civilian bloodshed might not really count as a “civil war”, but just because there is civil strife, gang warfare, and terrorism doesn’t mean that a war isn’t being fought. Just because one side has no chance of winning doesn’t mean that they aren’t fighting.
As long as US troops are there, no one will back the insurgents enough to make it the “civil war” that critics are hoping for, but I fear that trying too hard to pretend that there isn’t a civil war of any kind taking place will hurt our chances to stabilize things.
And, no, I’m not a Chicken Little Hawk crying that the sky is falling.
We just need to own up to the fact that this is a lot more than gangs and angry neighbors.
As is the situation in Iraq, my reasoning remains unchanged.
U.S. Army Staff Sgts. Matt Valenzuela and Richard Martinez, both of 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, search a home for contraband during a cordon and search mission in Baghdad, Iraq, Aug. 18, 2006. DoD photo by Tech. Sgt. Adrian Cadiz, U.S. Air Force. (Released)
The 172nd had been scheduled to come home this month, but the violence in Baghdad meant that they had to be shifted to the capital when the 3/2 Stryker Brigade took over in Mosul.
See also: Combat unit gets $1,000 a month for extending tour in Stars & Stripes.
And is Murdoc imagining it, or are the reports of serious violence way, way down since the reinforcements arrived? That isn’t to say that things are rosy, or that we should be satisfied that a heavily-armed presence slowed the violence…
Airborne Combat Engineer points out a trend that I’d never heard of before: Gunfire to clear a camping area.
Isles could get carrier Vinson
The Vinson, currently undergoing Refueling and Complex Overhaul in Norfolk, may be based in Hawaii when the work is complete in a few years:
The Navy in February said it intended to keep at least six aircraft carriers in the Pacific over the next two decades under a defense roadmap called the Quadrennial Defense Review.
The report, done every four years, outlines how the nation’s fighting force should be structured.
Officials believed the review would speak to the strategic desire to place a carrier in Hawai’i, which is closer to Asia than West Coast ports, but budget concerns for such a shift were, and still remain, a concern.
Ship travel time to the Taiwan Strait from Pearl Harbor at 30 knots is 5.9 days, 1.9 days from Guam, 8.2 days from San Diego and 7.3 days from Everett, Wash.
Other possibilities include Bremerton, San Diego, and Guam
Strategy Page discusses the stuck Raptor canopy that MO noted in April. Seems that the damage done to the stealthy skin of the plane was more expensive than the $286,000 cost of replacing the canopy itself.
The constant calls, the people frightening his children, and the demonstrations in front of his home apparently became a little too much.
Dario Ringach, an associate neurobiology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, decided this month to give up his research on primates because of pressure put on him, his neighborhood, and his family by the UCLA Primate Freedom Project, which seeks to stop research that harms animals.
Covered here.
Murdoc loves animals. They taste great. Especially with freshly-ground pepper.
