#2
LMAO. Care packages are always great. But honestly after having C-Rats, I have to admit that MREs, at least the generations since about 2000, are pretty good. (Al;though I did miss being able to cook the cans on an engine manifold).
But when they first came out? No. Freeze dried pork patty that turned into gray mush (tho the freeze dried strawberries were good without rehydration), and the stupidity of a main dish with beans for an Army aviation unit. Try going up to 5000 AGL in a helicopter and having the gas in the beans kick in - it was a fart-a-thon, hence the open doors. Those were reserved for the FNGs as a bit of introduction to flight and "nutrition". Bonus was the heaters - you can do fun things with those.
#3
OS, you never got your hands on the Mcilhenny Tabasco unofficial MRE cookbook? Scroll down. They offered it free along with a neat tabasco carrier that fitted the standard equipment belt (which I passed onto my replacement).
[RUDAW.NET] Last Sunday, the Anbar Provincial Council voted in favor of allowing Shiite bandidosbully boyz participate in anti-ISIS operations in the province. While participation of Shiite militias will serve to alleviate pressure being applied by the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... 's advances in the region, the deployment will also create larger existential dilemmas for Sunni tribal fighters, the US-led coalition and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
It is no coincidence that the council's vote came on the same day that ISIS made unprecedented advancements in Anbar. The placid provincial capital of Ramadi, the nucleus of Anbar, fell to a recent ISIS lightning offensive in the area. Within a few days the group managed to take control of the strategically vital Government Complex and Anbar Operations Command Center, killing at least 500 civilians and security forces in the process. Such an advance effectively ensures the group's consolidation of power over the city.
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Posted by: Fred ||
05/23/2015 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Islamic State
The little things are what I first notice in the news. This morning, for instance, that the U.S. government is fast-tracking the shipment of anti-tank missiles to the government of (some of) Iraq. This, we can only suppose, so that Baghdad's shrinking army may try to destroy some of the U.S.-supplied tanks and other heavy equipment, as well as the light equipment, that their soldiers abandoned to the Daesh in their hasty retreat from Ramadi; as well as all the equipment lost during their many previous hasty retreats. But will the same soldiers run before firing them, this time? I should think so.
There are also bigger things, such as the Syrian army's surrender of Palmyra to the same Daesh. Some journalists speculate that these Sunni Islamic psychotics may blow up the archaeological remains of this ancient "Venice of the sands." As they have done the same with all other pre-Islamic, and non-Sunni monuments that have fallen into their hands, I will admit the possibility. They will also, once again, massacre the defenceless, &c.
...While there are urgent measures all Western governments should be taking, by way of armed ground intervention in the Middle East, the next best response would be to do nothing. For doing nothing would be a radical improvement on what they are doing now. The United States has become, through layered delusions, the leading supplier of hideously powerful (and expensive) weapons to the Sunni Islamist Internationale; and through negotiations with Iran, the chief inspiration for the current regional arms race. Too, the administration has been consistently unhelpful, to the point of sabotage, when regional allies (especially Israel, Egypt, Jordan) have tried to cover for its mistakes.
...But here we run up against one of the "problems of democracy" to which I sometimes allude. In nine of ten cases, overall, "nothing" is the best thing a government can do, and in the tenth case, the best alternative to doing what is counter-productive. But the dynamic of democracy (with its drumbeat media) is such, that nothing is the one thing no government can do. From the mouths of sour old curmudgeons
[Wash Times] ANALYSIS/OPINION: One way of looking at the federal government is that part of it is permanent and another part of it is transient. The transient government comprises those elected officials and political appointees who change when administrations change.
There are exceptions (like Bob Gates staying on at Defense), but presidents work hard to fill as many positions as the law allows with folks beholden, loyal and like-minded. After all, elections matter and these political appointees reflect that constitutional process.
There are limits, of course, some in law because of 19th-century civil service reforms and others out of practical considerations. In early 2009 President Obama changed out Mike McConnell as director of national intelligence and me as CIA director, but he personally intervened to keep Steve Kappes on as deputy CIA director at Langley. And, as per tradition, he made no other changes in the intelligence community.
Both permanent and transient elements contribute to the policy process. The permanent government brings with it fact-based expertise and experience, both of which are virtues unless they become so dominant as to foster stagnation. The transient folks bring a political legitimacy along with a vision and energy for change that stimulates progress unless they become so obsessive that it fosters recklessness.
There is a clear tension, but the tension can be creative. With ambiguous information and split counsel, presidents can be bold without being reckless, informed without being captured by expertise, as happened in both 2011's Abbottabad raid and 2007’s Iraq surge.
Now in its seventh year, it might be good to take a look at some key decisions of the Obama administration through the lens of this distinction. It could be especially illuminating since this president is known to keep his own counsel and his administration has earned a reputation as being insular and controlling at the expense of Cabinet officials (who more tend to represent the views of the permanent government).
Out of the gate, two days after the inauguration, the president promised to empty Guantanamo within a year. I was still in government at the time and we all supported the concept of reducing the prisoner population. We already had released hundreds. But IF WE HAD BEEN ASKED, we would have pushed back on the 12-month timeline as creating pressure to make bad decisions on releases -- which the permanent government was duty-bound to oppose, as it has and as it continues to try to do.
There may have been some of that same dynamic at work five years later with the Bergdahl swap for five Taliban leaders from Guantanamo. The political imperatives to clean up the Afghan battlefield (no man left behind) before the administration's self-imposed clock ran out and to reduce the population at Guantanamo led to an incredibly awkward Rose Garden ceremony with the Bergdahl family, administration characterizations that a deserter had served with "honor and distinction," and a new precedent of negotiating with terrorists that the permanent government would have to live with.
The administration routinely has shown itself to be fond of timelines, the better (I suppose) to enforce and police the implementation of decisions. Hence, withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan were on the clock rather than being conditions-based, the approach that would have been supported by the permanent government. Playing to the shot clock led to near disaster in Iraq (and a return of U.S. forces) and threatened to do the same in Afghanistan until withdrawals of troops were pushed to the right.
In Libya the president decided to go to war (although he later overruled DOD and directed it not be called a war to avoid triggering the War Powers Act) to overthrow Moammar Gadhafi, a decision opposed by some National Security Council members. It took seven months, but Gadhafi was killed, his government destroyed, local tribes empowered and Libya descended into chaos.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
