That is the headline today that has the halls of the Pentagon in “Duck and Cover” mode I’m sure.  I hate to see the Boss (CMC) take a face shot over this incident.  The usual PC comments have been put out there by the PAO “this is Egregious Behavior” (you know it’s bad when they break out the big word book for something) and it will be investigated.  That is the understatement of the century…you can bet that someone (make that plural) will have their heads chopped off over this, just not the way the Taliban would handle a head chopping though.

 The first knee jerk reaction will be the banning of all camera’s, Iphones, video camera’s from theater.  Then they will make all Marines watch a new video called “Don’t piss on dead Taliwackers” and complete a climate survey how they feel about dead Taliwackers followed by a signed statement from every member of the Marine Corps that says “I did not piss on a dead Taliban fighter, nor anyone under my command and if they did, here are their names.”

To top it off, every Soldier and Marine will have to attend a “Safety War Standdown” to review all the lesson plans on Rules of War, followed by a short speech by the base JAG, topped off with a Video from Action Figure therapy group.  this video is NSFW, so don’t open this up on the company computer.

Just like after Tailhook in ’91, we had to sign those stupid statements for years and now the Grunts will have to bare this Arsepain!!!

Do I personally care about what they did? Not really and not something I would personally do.  We don’t know what these guys have been through.  Is this their sixth tour over there? Did they just lose a buddy in the firefight that day? We don’t know anything about what lead up to the incident.  Just like the photo of the Police Chief in VN shooting the guy in the head point blank.  On the face of it, horrible, but dig into what lead him up to that moment when he put a .38 to another human’s head and pulled the trigger…very interesting.

Do I think it was Egregious behavior?  Yes, this is no better then AQ hanging our contractors from the bridge in Iraq or the retards in Somalia dragging our soldier’s through the streets naked.  You have to understand that this stuff has been going on since the birth of man unfortunately.  How about all the beheadings AQ has done over the years?  Where is the condemnation over that??? You’ll never see it.  Double Standard… 

I sure have to laugh at the comments about this story on Yahoo.com …and I mean there are over 3,050 of them.  Many of them are like this which tells you what???  Mind you, these are average American’s commenting on the enemy.  They only know what they know looking at the War through a pair of reversed Bino’s.

“News Flash……….Taliban fighters get first bath in two years…….U.S. Marines provided them with shower……….Boy, were they pisssssssed.”

 Or this from a woman…” these marines killed the guys who have been trying TO KILL THEM!! dont judge what their doing while your sitting in your comfortable office, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT COMBAT IS LIKE! how bout WWII soldiers that decorated their tanks with the heads of dead jap soldiers. we train these men to be heartless killers….to see the oppisition as TARGETS…nothing more. ITS WAR PEOPLE….GROWUP!!!”

Another woman: “who gives a flying F???? they are dead, and everyone hates them including the afghans!! Maybe Karzai should be concerned at how he runs his country and how they treat women there??? We all know he is a puppet and that everyone else runs him!! he is a joke and we all know it!! ”

I am not even cherry picking these: “What are the rules? 1. kill them – 2. make sure they are dead. 3. be nice to them.” 

This is true I’m sure: “What does KARZAI think about BEHEADING? I think he should make his BANK ACCOUNT known,and dont forget about the SWISS BANK ACCOUNTANDTHE SOUTH AMERICAN BANK ACCOUNTS. I bet he has BILLIONS of AMERICAN TAXPAYERS DOLLARS!”

 Another woman, we must have started something within the Fetish group that urinates on their partners: “If I had the chance I’d pee on em… twice.” 

And the comments just go on “First of all: US military personnel doing something like this? SHOCKING! Second of all: I don’t care much about the opinion of “decency” from an Afghan government who allows bacha bereesh (the pimping of young boys) to go unchecked.”

So, I guess you can say that the immediate drill is to “Duck and Cover” but from the looks of just the first page of comments by folks around the Country…they just don’t care and maybe this just expresses the frustrations our guys are experiencing right now. 

To the CO of those Marines, it’s not your fault, but you will hang I’m sure. To the SgtMaj, your boss will take the face shot for this incident so at least take him out to dinner. 

To the Marines out there involved, you will hang for this for being stupid and allowing your buddy to film it and not upholding the values of the Corps.  You will also be elevated to Cult status by all the other guys who wish they could do that just once for all the Chickenshit IED’s or attacks they have endured for the last ten years, although I don’t recommend this becoming the standard practice because if the Taliwackers/AQ get  ahold of your dead body (not a thought I want to happen but you can bet they will try), I hate to think of what will be put on Youtube by them. 

Now on the flip side, here is the truth behind what this video has done.  I’m not insensitive to the ramifications of how this will impact our guys or the work they have done.  I’m sure the guys who gave it all (if they could speak from beyond Arlington) or left parts there would agree that this has probably set back relations and the scope of their work completed after ten years.  So while the general public is indifferent to this video, Todd, another pilot, who just spent a year at the War College gives a great perspective to our situation.

“I’m sure I’m a little more sensitive to this kind of thing than I normally would be, after spending the last month here at the War College studying wars of insurgency, but I could not be more disheartened by this incident of colossal stupidity. Whether it was French Algeria, Peru, China, Vietnam, and now Afghanistan – history has shown that you can’t win a war against an insurgency without mobilizing the support of the people – on both sides. It is good, and necessary, to have the folks Taco points out in support of our war effort. But, if that support can’t ultimately be used to win the support of the Afghani populace, we will never win. If we had called the Taliban and asked them what we could do to help them out, besides just plain going home or giving them a nuclear weapon, their next wish would have probably been something like this incident. Usually, in a war against an insurgency, 80% of the population is initially indifferent to the insurgent cause – they will ultimately choose the side whom they believe will bring them security. The side who can win them over will ultimately win. Whoever the yahoo poster was who said that the Afghani people don’t care about these dead Taliban fighters is retarded. They may not support their cousin, friend, uncle or whomever joining the movement and they may be against the movement altogether, but nothing like seeing their dead cousin,friend,uncle’s body being pissed on to push them from neutral to being a supporter.

Interesting you brought up the strategic corporal Plow, sometimes referred to as the strategic Sergeant – I was thinking the same thing. Unfortunately, these guys were the opposite of what is usually thought of as the enlisted leader who can affect things at the strategic level, in a GOOD way. Had these guys had even an iota of strategic understanding of the war, even the slightest comprehension of the COIN manual, we wouldn’t be talking about this.

We’d all like to piss on a dead Taliban – even excluding any pee fetish stuff. And no one could question that the Taliban has done far worse to more innocent people. Unfortunately, exactly none of that matters to the strategy of winning this war.”

UPdate: I need to post this from Allen West…it says alot. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/allen-west-marines-incident-shut-your-mouth-war-hell_616699.html

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a former Army lieutenant colonel, sends THE WEEKLY STANDARD an email commenting on the Marines’ video, and has given us permission to publish it.

 “I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.

“All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?

“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.

Semper Fi,

Taco

Semper Fi,

Taco

 Two prospective U.S. Marines had quite the warmup before physical training Wednesday afternoon after chasing down shoplifters fleeing from the Aiken Mall.

Tura Brady and Jeremy DuMont, both 18 and students at South Aiken High School, are part of the U.S. Marine Corps Delayed Entry Program. The two teenagers were with a small group at the Marine recruiting office in the Aiken Mall on Whiskey Road getting ready to take a run, but they didn’t expect it to start the way it did.

Around2:30 p.m., two men were seen sprinting past the recruiting office with a shopping bag, and a loss prevention officer was pursuing them but not able to keep up, according to Gunnery Sgt. Ian Durham. 

Marine recruiter Sgt. Raymond Madison, who was in the office readying his recruits to exercise, commented that someone needed to stop them. He then looked up, and the recruiting office door was closing as Brady and DuMontrushed out to chase the shoplifters.

“Initially, I was shocked,” Madison said, adding that he then became worried and was quite relieved when he found out they were both OK. “I didn’t expect them to react at first.”

What happened next was like something out of an action flick.

“He was Batman; I was Superman,” Brady said.

According to Durham, one of the shoplifters hopped into a truck driven by a woman as the other man ran through the parking lot toward Red Lobster.

DuMont chased the male suspect through the parking lot by foot until he dropped the stolen merchandise. DuMont grabbed the bag, jogged back to the mall and handed it back to loss prevention officer, who was then calling the police, Durham said.

The driver of the truck attempted to hit Brady with the vehicle, said Durham. He dodged it and ended up hopping into the bed of the truck, which started to move erratically through the parking lot as the driver attempted to knock Brady off, Durham said.

Brady held on until they were about a quarter of a mile down Whiskey Road from the mall. Due to heavy traffic, the driver had to slow down. Brady jumped off the back of the truck, jotted down the license plate number on the side of his boot and headed back to the mall, Durham said.

Brady said he wrote the number on his boot because it was raining and he was afraid the ink would wash away if he wrote it on his hand.

Once the two were back at the mall, information was turned over to mall security officers, who filed a report with Aiken Public Safety.

According to the report, merchandise had been taken from Dillard’s and Belk. No arrests have been made.

Brady and DuMont were not injured in their pursuit and even did their physical training when they got back.

“It’s uncommon for young people to risk their own safety to do the right thing, which is why we’re extremely proud of them,” Durham said.

The teenagers were nervous to tell their parents about what happened but said they were proud and thankful that they weren’t hurt.

DuMont said his only regret is that he didn’t catch the guy.

“I wish I was faster,” DuMont said.

Both DuMont and Brady are excited to graduate high school and go to boot camp. Durham said he believes they will make great Marines as they showed an example of one of the USMC principles – doing the right thing in the face of danger.

“It was just an instant reaction, and we train these guys to react instantly even before they go to boot camp,” Durham said. “They did the right thing without hesitation.”

The two future Marines said their adventure on Wednesday was exciting, but they don’t think they want a repeat experience.

“That was fun,” Brady said, laughing. “Let’s never do this again.”

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Semper Fi,

Taco

The Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission http://www.brac.gov (BRAC) is just another form of “Fraud, Waste and Abuse” in my mind.  For those of you new to this, every politician out there with a military base located in their state wants government funds and support people to go with the funds.  The base personnel spend lots of money in the local economy so it only makes sense to keep your people happy which means you get re-elected every couple of years.

Here is the latest example of F/W&A.  I called up to MOBCOM, that is a place where all Marine reservists check for things dealing with pay, points etc.  They are located on a former Air Force base called Richards-Gebaur which was nicknamed “Dickey Goober”  and BRAC’d in the early Nineties. When I moved from Okinawa in May of 1995 to Kansas City, the Ninth Marine Corps Recruiting District HQ was on the west side of Kansas City and we moved from our location to the old Air Force HQ on Dickey Goober.  The 14^th Marines moved upstairs from us, and we had this wonderful new space to work in.  Mind you, the Air Force does a nice job on their buildings, and for a Marine it was first class.  The Marines built a brand-new four or five story office building to house MOBCOM down the street while the rest of the base was turned into some sort of college.  Our Marines were able to live in the base housing there and it was a nice deal. 

I digress as usual, but when I called up there for a set of orders, I was told that due to being BRAC’d, that part of MOBCOM was moving to New Orleans and the other half to Indiana.  I was shocked because that building was no more then fifteen years old.  What in the world is the Marine Corps thinking?  Now they have to spend money in New Orleans, a total crap hole where the Marine Forces Reserves (MarForRes) is located to build new office space.  Probably the same thing going on in Indiana.  I asked what was going to happen to the spaces there and was told the Army was moving in.

It was then that the “Fraud, Waste and Abuse” light went off in my head!  BRAC is nothing more then a government shell game used to create jobs in one place while showing a decrease of troops in another.  Think about it, now they can show that the Marine Corps is saving money by moving the Marines out of Kansas City and consolidating them in New Orleans, a city so plagued by crime that the police won’t report the statistics. And—lets’ not think about the wasted man $$$ days when the threat of a hurricane approaches and they have to evacuate all personnel from that fine city to neighboring states. 

In the late nineties, Brunswick NAS was closed as part of a BRAC recommendation http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/brunswick.htm that just took away the states second largest employer.  As I remember, this was done because some congressman there didn’t want to play on President Bush’s party line sheet of music.  Same thing the current President possibly threw out to Representative Nelson from Nebraska when talking about BRAC’ing Offutt Air Force Base if he didn’t tow the line on his health care bill. 

Once again, nothing is new in the world of “Fraud, Waste and Abuse.” See, the Military is a pawn that can be moved around when needed.  The politicians can justify this by claiming that consolidating forces will save money.  On the other sheet of the books, they can claim “look at all the jobs I created over here in this state” during the next campaign to get re-elected, while ignoring the hundreds of millions of dollars spent to build new buildings, move the personnel to staff it (consider moving 4,000 folks at an average cost of 15K each equals about 6 million just for the household move) just in the name of saving the taxpayers money. 

So we spend hundreds of millions to save a few million!  BRAC should be shown for what it really is–a political leverage arm of the government that is, in fact, costing us more than we care to really know.  I just wanted you to know that your taxpayer dollars are hard at work.  If your life was tossed upside down due to a move, loss on a house from the forced move, city turned into a ghost town from the loss of personnel there, feel free to leave a comment below, I’d be interested in what you have to say.

S/F

Taco