I learned that mantra years ago when I was assigned to lead a platoon of these Marines. My chief scout in the platoon, a title held by the most experienced Scout Sniper, was Damon.
When we met in 2012 on Camp Lejeune, Damon was in his late twenties. His guys were at-home in the woods and with a load on their backs; they rarely complained about being dirty, tired or uncomfortable. I learned quickly that Scout Snipers were the best in the battalion, regular infantrymen who had started out carrying an assault rifle or lobbing mortars but aspired to something sleeker, freer and more elite. Before graduating the arduous Scout Sniper Basic Course to earn his new, coveted title, Damon himself had carried a machine gun on a deployment to Anbar province. I remember the front of his uniform was covered in ribbons and medals earned on combat tours. On his back were the words “Scout Sniper.” They were branded into his skin.
Similar to most competitive people, Damon didn’t like following rules, including the rule that required him to buckle the chinstrap on his Kevlar helmet. Like a kid who refuses to put on a helmet before riding his bicycle, I couldn’t get him to listen. Whenever we went to the field for training, I’d see that nylon strap dangling off his sideburns. “I know, sir,” Damon would say. Until the next time it happened, and the time after that. If only he hadn’t been so good-natured (and good at his job), I might have been more insistent that he fall in line.
[NYPOST] The world’s lone superpower has been unable to protect one of the most important commercial arteries on Earth from a band of Third World rebels.
Welcome to the latest humiliation of a Biden administration foreign policy premised on not being overly provocative toward our enemies.
Shipping companies have announced they are going to avoid the Red Sea and Bab-al-Mandab, a narrow strait connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, after a sustained campaign of attacks from Iran's Houthi sock puppets ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews They like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him... fighters in Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... This is a blow to freedom of navigation — one of the jewels of the US-led order — and a tremendous success for the Iranian-aligned Houthis, who have leveraged drones, missiles and attempted seizures of ships to gain the upper hand over the world’s foremost navy.
We are not talking about a backwater but a key passageway for East-West commerce.
Nearly 12% percent of global trade passes through the Red Sea, including a prodigious amount of oil from the Persian Gulf.
Disrupting this trade allows the Houthis to have, in effect, global reach.
Insurance rates for shipping are going up, and companies are forswearing the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, that great shortcut connecting Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... and Asia.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/20/2023 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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Top|| File under: Houthis
[IsraelTimes] The al-Mawasi Strip was deemed most suited as a humanitarian zone. Instead, encampments are set up near Hamas ...not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... installations.
On October 17, ten days after the Hamas massacre in southwestern Israel of over 1,200 Israelis and people from over 40 nationalities, the Israel Defense Forces announced the location of a humanitarian zone where "international humanitarian aid will be provided as needed." This decision followed several days of negotiations with Egypt, the US and others to create a safe zone for fleeing Gazooks who evacuated their homes that were in Hamas-infested areas, namely in the northern Gazoo
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Displaced Gazans could be in a far safer area – why aren’t they?
Because they haven't figured out how to time transport them back to the 19th Century? [Or would that be like Abbott sending buses to sanctuary cities?]
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.
...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the 
...not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
