Things are getting worce

[TMLutas]

The photos offered to the NY Times right after this attack showed an artillery shell as a recovered American Hellfire Missile. It was so obviously staged that even the NYT removed it off their website with in hours of posting it. This shows that the enemy will do anything to decieve us. Your misplaced compassion is leading you in to error. All war is deception, so do the rest of us a favor and apply the 72 hour rule before you start doing the blame game. If you really feel strongly about this ... then use your time more wisely to say some prayers for the dead and wounded while you wait for events to unfold and the truth to be revield.

Just a little technical note, it was not only a shell, it was a shell fired from a Soviet gun, most likely a training shell. The top wasn't fused and the bottom had banding on it with rotational marks unique to Soviet bloc artillery.

That's the kind of neat stuff you can pick up when you read the milblogs. In this case, Rev. Donald Sensing, former artilleryman did the honors for me. Other times it'll be Jason Van Steenwyk or any of the many other milblogs that are out there. Too many civilians are woefully uninformed about the technical details of military life. I know that I am. I just try to learn enough that my voice won't lend itself to getting more people killed than absolutely necessary. I recommend the practice.

[EdBecerra]

Let me make myself clear, collective punishment is an abomination. The low levels of privacy in village life make it a tempting abomination, though because most of the time the locals will lie to the occupiers' faces and cover for each other. This doesn't change from continent to continent, there's a certain village solidarity that's a constant. In other words, it is highly unlikely that the presence of Al Queda was unknown to the rest of the village because of the nature of that way of life.

It might be an abomination, but it works.

I remember, over 20 years ago, when I was at Aberdeen Proving grounds, training to be a gunsmith, when I was mugged in the barracks. Someone threw a blanket over my head, beat the shit out of me, and robbed me.

When my sargeant found out, he wasn't concerned that I'd lost all my cash. He was furious because my military documentation had been stolen, and might possibly be sold to criminals. He immediately punished the entire unit, and flatly stated that we'd remain under lockdown until my wallet was returned with ALL military and civilian ID papers intact. He also parenthetically noted that he didn't give a shit if my money was in my wallet when it was returned, as he'd consider that a practical lesson for me in personal security.

My wallet was "discovered" will all ID intact (cash missing, of course) less than an hour later. Sarge then announced that there was nothing he despised more than barracks thieves. Robbing civvies was one thing, but robbing your brothers in arms? Contemptable. He explained that the lockdown was canceled, but we'd be on privilage restrictions until he personally felt that the thieves understood the importance of the brotherhood of arms.

A few days later, a few of the soldiers in my training unit somehow managed to lock themselves inside their own wall lockers. Then, while still INSIDE the lockers, they mysteriously managed to make it up a flight of stairs and threw themselves out a second floor window.

At least, that's what THEY claimed. That for personal reasons, they did it to themselves. That was their story, and they were sticking to it. Sarge and the Captain smiled, and were satisfied that certain lessons were properly understood, and the men who'd "fallen" out of the window were accepted back into the unit once they'd been dismissed from the hospital.

No further barracks robberies occured.

Whatever works.