perception is reality

While all these great changes are in the works for the military medical cluster fuck the army is talking about all the nice changes coming and how things are so bad everywhere else.
Bull Fucking Shit.

I am reminded of a great quote I heard a few years ago for situations just like this:

"DON'T PISS ON ME AND TELL ME IT'S RAINING, ASSHOLE!!!!!"

Like we don't notice the problems still exist. Promises will be made, but a great debt remains unpaid. And that debt will be felt in the hearts of a generation born of ill-conceived war.

Startling reports

I was devastated yesterday when I spoke to a severely injured soldier.
He's about to ETS and the pricks in the MEB office are dragging his Board and taking their sweet time moving his papers. They probably hope he will quit, and ETS without the benefits of an MEB. That's just how they roll their shit- at troops' cost!
These fuckers don't have any interest in helping the troops- I don't know how they sleep at night.
NEVER LEAVE A FALLEN COMRADE! Its not that fucking hard.
These severely injured troops don't want your sympathy or your cheap yellow support. But you MEB penny-pinchers owe them respect and preservation of their dignity. PEBLOS need to STOP PLAYING DOCTOR! Let the Docs do their jobs and start helping the soldier get the treatment and documentation they need to make a smooth transition from Active Duty to Veteran status.

In case you missed it . . .

The fucking oil companies have seized the opportunity of public distraction to jack up gas prices again.
With all the Walter Reed news, the Libby verdict, whats-her-name Smith, Cheney's Black Cloud, . . .
So even on post the prices went way up wicked fast.
Come on now, why make the troops pay twice!?!?!? Are you kidding me!?!?!?

Ann Coulter: Hypocrite

I mean come on now!!!

If she was really as far-right-leaning as she talks she would get out of the spotlight, find a man, submit to him, kick off her shoes, start cooking in the kitchen, and start squirting out his kids.

THEN WE'D ALL BE HAPPIER!!!

well, except the poor bastard who married her and the kids that'll suffer her cooking.

its about fucking time

So, someone finally saw through the bullshit that troops are getting the medical care they need. What took so long - was saying troops don't get proper medical treatment considered unloyal? Would doubting troop medical care "embolden" our enemies? For fuck's sake it doesn't take a rocket scientist to walk into a building and smell the foul odor of building decay.
I am appalled that military leadership has covered-up the administration's neglect of real issues that troops face before, during, and after war. Perhaps too many "yes" people get promoted through the ranks. Maybe there are too many "agreeable" subordinates in the military who don't ask the right questions. I always appreciated when an enlisted troop had a good creative suggestions, shit, some of them worked out just great. But I guess it stopped with me - but I never got sick of telling the boss "I told you so," when his bone-headed ideas wouldn't pan out the way he wanted them.

Experience-based respect (really the only respect) in the military is often equated to time in service - those with more time get more respect. Some guys have 2 or 3 years of experience, get the hang of things and are great leaders - they have character, look out for their subordinates, and handle tough problems. Unfortunately there are also guys who have 1 year of experience 10-15 times - they're dead weight, they get promoted because promotion is time-based, not performance-based as it should be. These guys get in the way and say things like "yeah, everything's just fine down here," all the while forgetting that they serve a profession and are accountable to troops above and BELOW as well. But the leaders above offer promotions and the troops below fall by the wayside. Hypocritical careerist pricks end up at the top. But any college freshman sociology class teaches that in the section on bureaucracy. It's just the way things work.

But turning a blind eye to negligence of troop medical care is plain abhorrent.

Duty Honor Country

In 1995 I started looking at what I was going to do with my life after graduating from High School. I knew I had good options in front of me, but only one seemed right. I chose the Army. I was attracted to the camaraderie, the honor, the values, and the long line of character-filled leaders that had paved the way before me. For 10 years I served in uniform. When I was done - separated for injuries from Iraq - I reflected on the past, a lot.
The Army attracts people who have character, not those who need to develop it. There is a massive exodus right now of people who are fed up with the hypocrisy that they have been trying to work around for their careers. Big Army gets the formula wrong. Every year there are pay raises, and young officers get the highest raises of all ranks - this is where, even after all the raises, these are the fastest shrinking (demographic by rank) population of troops. These young officers don't value the money to the degree Big Army thinks they do. These troops want to know that they can depend on their superiors, that they will be developed professionally, that they will be trusted and respected. These character driven values outweigh the value of the dollar to many young officers. As disappointment sets in and frustration grows when officers find little to no support from their superiors, they opt to leave the military.

Back to the basics

" . . . if you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles . . . "

Sun Tzu said that thousands of years ago and it is still true.

One of the reasons we are having such trouble in our current wars is our (as a nation) lack of knowledge of our enemies. We describe them with parsed ideas: "evil-doers," "terrorists," "radicals." But we stop there and do not examine the root causes that drive these people to take action against us.
Simply put, they are foreign to us. We must become familiar with our enemies. The theory of keeping your friends close but your enemies closer can be linked (however loosely) to this idea - where to keep an enemy close is to study that enemy and get to know that enemy's motivation. Know that enemy's values. Do not, under any circumstances, assume that this enemy shares our values. To speak scientifically, our enemy is applying a different calculus to its battle plan. It has different values equated within its cost-benefit analysis of war. Until we can understand these values we cannot effectively strike this enemy, and we will be shocked after each enemy strike.