Archive for March, 2009

I haven’t really been following the whole “Tea Party” phenomenon too closely, but it’s interesting and, I think, a good thing. Glenn Reynolds has been following it since it started taking off.

A recent post has a picture and lots of links.

One thing I do find interesting is that the media seems uninterested in grass-roots-type community organizations since, oh, about the second week of November. But maybe it’s just Murdoc being overly sensitive.

6.8 SPC AR:

Barrett REC7

Murdoc apologizes for the light posting of late. A number of issues have contributed to his shirkfulness.

Since I’m going to continue to be busy with a few things for a while yet, I’m going to do something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and that’s taking more guest posts. What I’m especially looking for would be a photo of some military hardware or personnel and commentary to go with it. The only compensation I can offer is my thanks and a credit in the post. If you’ve got your own site, feel free to cross-post material. Just let me know and I’ll get a link in for you.

If you want to go all-out like Tim’s Civil War Saturday entries, go right ahead. But that level of detail and depth is not at all necessary. I’d like more than a couple of sentences, but a couple of short paragraphs of commentary or opinion would be plenty. Hopefully, we can kick the discussion in the comments area up a notch while we’re at it.

I’m not quite sure about the exact logistics of this yet. I think what would be best would be for anyone interested to send me an email with the photo attached and the commentary in the body. I can’t promise to run everything that gets sent in, but it will all get looked at and considered.

To begin with, I’d like to stick to military topics for this. Any time period is okay, from the ancient world to the hypothetical future. I’d like for most of it to be 20th and 21st Century, though, and any Civil War-era submissions will probably go into Civil War Saturday.

If anyone’s interested, send it on.

Officials: US ship in China spat was hunting subs

The U.S. Navy ship that got into a scrape with five Chinese vessels last weekend in the South China Sea was looking for threats such as submarines — presumably Chinese — in waters that China claims as its own, defense officials acknowledged Tuesday.

The United States maintains that the unarmed USNS Impeccable was operating legally in international waters when it was surrounded and harassed by the Chinese.

Actually a few paragraphs later the story says that the unnamed defense officials said it’s “designed and equipped for sub-hunting work” but “would not be specific about the Impeccable’s mission.” So that’s not quite acknowledging that it was “hunting subs.” But still.

Coalition cuts combat brigades by half since peak of US ‘surge’

DJ Elliot at the Long War Journal:

The number of US and allied combat brigades deployed in Iraq has been cut in half since the height of the “surge” in the summer of 2007, while the number of Iraqi security forces has nearly doubled during the same period of time.

Here’s the key numbers:

The coalition personnel numbers during the “surge” peaked at just under 180,000 (168,000 US and 12,000 allied) troops. The current reductions in coalition forces only bring the total personnel numbers down to approximately 120,000 in September 2009.

During this same time period, the Iraqi Army doubled in size from 125,000 to 250,000.

He goes on to explain that many of the newest Iraqi forces, plus the majority of those slated to stand up this year, are support personnel, not combat troops. The creation of an Iraqi army able to operate on its own has been an ongoing project that we’ve been watching for years. It’s paying off.

Really, I could excerpt the whole thing. Go read.

U.S. Army Soldiers of the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division patrol through Rashidiyah, Iraq, Oct. 6, 2007. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Russell Bassett)

Greyhawk points out the confirmation of something we were already pretty sure was going to happen:

Shifting one Stryker brigade slated for Iraq to Afghanistan just meant that a different Stryker brigade would have to deploy to Iraq to take its place.

But Greyhawk makes an observation that had not occurred to me:

Read the first entry in this series for details of the preparations made by the Stryker Brigade for an Iraq deployment – 10-month Arabic language schools being just part of the training rendered useless by a reassignment to a country where the locals don’t speak it.

Of course, “intensive, 10-month Arabic language training” and “exercises… where they had to help their commanders negotiate with native-speaker role players” were now useless – but if they were no longer needed in Iraq, so be it.

But they were needed in Iraq – just not as badly as the Obama administration needed to make it appear that troops initially slotted for Iraq were going to Afghanistan instead – seemingly making good on a key campaign promise. So with much fanfare the Iraq drawdown (consisting entirely of the Stryker Brigade)/Afghanistan surge (Strykers plus a Marine unit) was announced, and subsequent polls indicated Americans were wildly enthusiastic about the idea.

Let’s recall a previous Stryker brigade deployment moved up in the schedule: The latest “rush to war” in which the media fell over itself fretting about units being “surged” into Iraq by President Bush without having completed all of the planned training.

Which unit was that particular article about? Oh, it was the 4th Brigade, 2nd Division. The same brigade that is being sent to Iraq early to fill in for the brigade being shifted to Afghanistan. I wonder where all the hysterics over sending unprepared troops into the combat zone are this time around. (Not really.)

How the times have changed.

Canadian army soldiers from the 37 Brigade Group fire live rounds during a convoy operation exercise at Fort Pickett, Va., March 5, during Exercise Maritime Raider 09. Photo by Spc. Matthew Freire

Lefty!

A Canadian Army artillery crew member fires a C3 howitzer during Exercise Maritime Raider 09 at Fort Pickett, Va., March 4. Photo by Pfc. Benjamin Boren

More images here.