perfidy

The Smith & Wesson Model 686P is the latest incarnation of the stainless steel magnum. The test weapon is (nearly) literally off the production floor, and is the 6th generation of that design. The 686P differs from the standard 686 by incorporating an adjustable rear sight, red-ramp front sight, and 7-round cylinder to the design.

The weapon is chambered for either .38 Special or .357 Magnum, and is rated for hotter .38+P loads. It is available with a 6" barrel, 4", or, in the case of the test weapon, a 2 1/2" barrel.

At the first range visit, I put 50 rounds of .38 and 50 more of .357 Magnum downrange. Both were 158 grain loads. Groups with the .38s were fair at 7 yards, but a wee bit of a handful. The Magnums were too much- big bark and big bite to the firing hand. I really had to bear down on the grips and make extra effort to control the round. That in turn had consequences on accuracy, with shots scattered and entirely ineffective. It is also plausible that the short barrel couldn't throw those heavier rounds accurately. In subsequent testing, I put 100 rounds of 130 grain .38 Special through, with marked improvement all 'round: tighter groups, and with a final few tweaks to the rear sight I was hitting center-of-mass every time I cared to put rounds there.

Characteristic of Smith wheelguns, the action is silky and tight. Single action fire has no slop or play; if you think you’re going to take up the trigger slack like with your daddy’s old hunting rifle, think again- this piece is going off. Double action work is not at all ratchety but of course you get the resistance that comes with DA fire. The 2 1/2” is definitely muzzle-heavy, even with 7 in the cylinder. The weight is forward of the trigger, not on top of it as I anticipated. Plan acccordingly for a bit of a work out on your firing-side wrist.

The weapon comes solely with the stainless finish and hogue rubber grips. I found the grips getting a little slippery on a temperature-controlled (but clammy) indoor range. And I was reminded of the steel backstrap by the ache in the palm of my firing hand the rest of the day, although that was only with the heavier 158 grain loads.

My initial thought about adding adjustable sights (and therefore, cost) to a carry snubby was that it was not a terrific idea. It seemed that a weapon that compact, built and purchased for a personal defense, emergency weapon would not be the first choice to expect careful, measured fire that an adjustable sight can support. But in my situation, the majority of this weapon’s life will be lived on the range, where I can take as long as I please to concentrate on sight picture, breathing, trigger control, and other fundamentals. So I sprung for the spiffy rear sight, but would concede that it is not at all central to this model's mission.

As a carry weapon the 686P is superior. Even with the 7 round cylinder, the 686P does not bulge excessively and naturally the short barrel lends itself to concealment. The weight might be off-putting to some, and I can’t say I blame them. It’s an all-steel piece folks, and loaded it’s a tad heavy, coming in at about a lumpy 3 pounds. But my personal preference is for a heavier weapon. S&W’s alloy revolvers of titanium or scandium pack similar punch but are a fraction of the weight. Problem is I find them TOO light; I want to know it’s still there, not have to reach down and check it's still there.

OK, but what about the zombies?

This revolver is a respectable emergency anti-zombie weapon. As a revolver, there are no external safeties to consider, or magazine feed/ejection problems to clear in case of crisis. Capacity is limited, but this is not a primary offensive weapon. It is light enough to carry in a shoulder rig all day without strain, but puts a hefty round downrange. There is little doubt of either the .38 or .357 effectiveness against the cranium, whether that of the living or the re-animated. There is a fair chance of mobility kill with either round, given a lucky hit to the kneecap or tibia, but that level of accuracy is probably better left to rifles. If the zombies are even close enough in the first place that you need to pull your 686P, you're best option is to get the hell out of there and fast.

Final stats and gun porn below the fold:

Rate of Fire: 2 (basically, 7 rounds/minute; with training, and speedloaders, that could double but…)

Magazine Capacity: 2 (7 shots just ain’t much)

Effective Range: 3 (“Effective” the key word here- when I’m shooting it, beyond about 30 ft, the legions of the undead will be safe)

Humpability: 9 (Fits in generous pocket; can carry all day no sweat)

Melee Combat: 2 (heavy and chunky, but small- you’re only getting one hit with it before you’re devoured)

Zombie Hole Size: 4, or an exit would the size of a chubby shrew

Zombie Incapacitation Potential: 3.7/10*

*Note, again, that in the event of close-quarters head shots either round will likely pulp the zombie’s head.

Murdoc reported the other day that the Navy will soon be permanently retiring the last of the Iowa-class Battleships. In some respects – mostly for reasons of nostalgia, this is a sad thing. Those ships were the last warships that looked, well, like warships. Carriers, for all their impressive size, do not look as intimidating as a big-ass BB. (Not for nothing did the ship in Starblazers look like a dreadnought and not a carrier.)

The Navy is moving on. It has no plans to replace the Battleships (although it promised Congress it would replace the Battleship’s shore-bombardment capability, something that as yet it has not done) and will replace the aging, cold-war era cruisers, destroyers and frigates with the new DD(X) class of warships. In addition, the Navy plans on acquiring a large number of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), a smaller multi-role ship based on a modular design.

Some of the commenters on Murdoc’s post complained that putting down the battleships was a big mistake. Among the reasons cited for this, they mentioned: new ships have no armor, leaving them vulnerable to asymmetrical warfare; the Navy is pursuing technical solutions at the expense of proven warfighting potential; new ships cost too much, and we already have the battleships; one of the Navy’s primary missions is landing and supporting ground forces, and the battleship is essential for this; brass hate battleships because they are effective, but not sexy, pretty or high tech; and battleships do not require large taxpayer outlay.

In this, they are entirely wrong except for one point. Battleships are sexy.

The primary role of a blue water navy is to control the sea lanes. Sea control consists of two things: assuring the use of sea lanes for friendly shipping and fleets, and denying the same to hostile shipping and fleets. That is the primary mission of a main-line warship. Other tasks either support the primary mission (e.g., the Aegis cruiser which protects the carrier, allowing its strike aircraft to complete the primary mission) or support secondary missions (e.g., projecting power inland either by use of carrier air assets or supporting Marine landings.)

In a perfect world a speed boat with a missile launcher would be more than adequate for denying access to the sea. A bulk transport would suffice for moving Marines around. Sadly, there are nasty rude hostile forces who hope to interfere with our cunning plan to control the world’s oceans. To put a spoke in our wheel, they build boats that can sink our boats. We don’t build nifty umpty-billion dollar boats just because they’re cool, or even just so they can sink the bad boats. While this back and forth evolution of offensive and defensive weapons systems follows its costly logic, remember the primary mission.
We roll in all sorts of defenses, and clever weapons to allow the platform to survive in a hostile environment and as a result, almost every aspect of the modern warship, indeed the entire composition of the carrier battle group has little to do with accomplishing the primary mission per se, but rather with protecting the fleet from enemy action so that it can survive the battle and then carry out the primary mission – establish sea control

This process has already had its way with the venerable battleship. Exceedingly clever naval architects put armor on battleships to allow it to survive toe-to-toe engagements with other battleships. They installed massive 16” guns because those were the most effective weapons of the day. The most advanced analog computers were installed at great expense to increase the accuracy of those guns. Large crews enabled rapid and effective damage control in an era of unguided munitions. However, despite all of the skull sweat and careful thought, a battleship’s engagement range never increased much beyond twenty miles.

Aircraft carriers signaled the demise of the battleship for one very simple reason – airplanes have vastly greater range than big guns. The battleship became obsolescent because airplanes fly farther than shells from sixteen inch guns. Airplanes could detect enemy ships from much greater ranges. No matter how much armor a battleship has, once we know where it is, any number of aircraft can be dispatched from beyond its weapon’s range, and will eventually destroy it. As the Japanese learned. That is why battleships ceased to be the frontline weapon in America’s naval arsenal.

That we were able to re-task obsolete battleships to useful missions like shore bombardment is all well and good. But those guns only reach 21 miles or so, and are not precision weapons. Cruise missiles and any number of other future weapons will do the job better. But the battleship, once queen of the sea, has really found work as a janitor, no longer able to perform the mission for which she was designed – sea control.

There is a point of diminishing returns, where the additional cost of defensive measures costs so much that the platform is ridiculously expensive, even though it might be a technological marvel, look really cool and seem awfully impressive in every way. The high cost of all the enhancements necessary to permit the weapon system to continue (for a while) to perform its primary mission not only reduces the number of platforms, but diverts resources from other needs.

Right now, B-2 bomber is a perfect example of a weapon system on the very teetering edge of obsolescence. At a billion dollars a pop, it is an expensive bird. Where did that money go? Not into increasing the range, payload, speed or other characteristics that bear directly on the mission of delivering munitions on target. In fact, in most of these regards, the B-2 is less effective than the B-52. All that extra money went into stealth and low observables technology. Defensive measures to allow the bomber to survive an increasingly hostile battlefield. Will we be able to afford the follow on to the B-2 and all the defensive measures that will be needed to keep a human crew alive in say, 2030? Most likely not.

The reason is precision weapons. Advances in cruise missiles and brilliant weapons will soon render most surface vessels as obsolete as the battleship.

A carrier costs five billion dollars. A cruise missile costs a million. How many cruise missiles are you willing to expend to get value for your money? 4,999 and it’s still a bargain. Logistical issues aside, even the most advanced fleet defense system is going to be saturated by hundreds of missiles, let alone thousands. And as computer technology hurtles forward, those things are going to be cheaper and cheaper. And then there’s the guy in New Zealand who built one in his garage for $5000. Sea-denial will be within the reach of any nation or entity that has the technological wherewithal to build what is essentially a small RC jet plane with explosives and commoditized computer parts.

The fast, smart missiles that will be arriving at a military near you over the next few years will change the nature of warfare. Inhumanly precise, they will make armor useless. With sufficient intelligence, they can target warships and task forces from beyond the range of their strike aircraft. In sufficient numbers, they will saturate any imaginable defense. That last task will be easier yet when you imagine that the missile will have built-in terminal guidance systems that will allow it to dodge incoming defensive fire. In that world, how big and expensive a ship do you really want to build? How big can you risk building, and how small can you build and still retain significant military power? That is the question that will confront naval planners over the coming decades.

We will have to weigh the cost of a weapons platform with the risk of losing it. The ultimate in distributed warships would be a SEAL sitting in a Zodiac boat with a shoulder-fired precision munition. We could have thousands of those. The risk of losing any individual ship would be acceptable. Multi-billion dollar warships are a much bigger thing to risk losing, in terms of both cost and personnel. If precision weaponry evolves to the point where almost any ship can be destroyed as soon as it is detected (and it will) then the days of the large warship will be over. The flipside of that argument is that ships can be much smaller and still (through the use of brilliant weapons) maintain as much effective firepower as a battleship.

Distributed, stealthy, small ships are the only things that will survive in the furball of the future. They will be supplemented by long duration unmanned combat vehicles for both strike and surveillance – perhaps operating off of small and stealthy mini-carriers. There will be missile barges sailing in safe waters with hundreds of cruise missiles able to hit with centimeter accuracy targets a thousand miles away. Nearly undetectable submarines will launch similar cruise missiles from a hundred feet below the surface. Land, air and space-based brilliant cruise missiles will extend the range at which the fleet can project power. Global space-based communications, surveillance and intelligence networks will tie the dispersed fleets together, and give them an accurate picture of enemy activities. Fleet elements from half a globe away or in orbit or in visual range or all three will combine to give us the sea control that we seek.

There will be no place for the traditional carrier in this battle, just as there is no place for the battleship today. Two things guarantee it: the vulnerability of large ships to precision weapons, and the superiority of advanced cruise missiles to naval aircraft. Compared to traditional naval aircraft, missiles are faster, more maneuverable, more expendable, cheaper and smaller. The only factors that have given aircraft the edge up until now are accuracy and range. But just like the aircraft eclipsed the big gun, the cruise missile will eclipse the aircraft.

Carriers will linger on – they will remain useful as extra-territorial airstrips and for projecting power in exactly the same manner that those last two battleships did. They will also remain symbols of American naval mastery. But we are already nearing the point where it has become a serious consideration as to whether we can afford the risk of committing carriers to certain areas like the Persian Gulf, where Iranian missiles could saturate a tactically immobile and easily visible fleet. The range at which that kind of interdiction zone can be projected will only increase over time.

The LCS, and to a lesser extent the DD(X), are the Navy’s attempts to come to grips with this emerging reality. Enhancing our capabilities to project logistical power – in support of troops on the ground – is very important. But we need to really change the way we think about naval warfare. Littoral strategies and forward from the sea are all well and good, but all of our ships – up to and including our current lords of the sea, carriers – will be very vulnerable to any enemy that can build a cruise missile and (key point here) pinpoint the location of our carriers.

The future of warfare is that anything that can be seen can be killed. Further, it can be killed from thousands of miles away. What we need to focus on is developing better weapons, sure; but even more important is securing the base from which all our military power flows – space. (You knew I get here eventually, didn’t you?) Even now, 75% (a wild-assed estimate, but in the ballpark) of our power derives from control of and use of space. Without satellite intelligence, we are blind. Without satellite communications, we are clumsy. Without GPS, our bombs are knocked back to 1970s accuracy levels.

Battleships are the last thing we need to worry about. Even carriers are on their way to obsolescence. Where we need to focus our efforts is where those efforts will yield the greatest payoff, both in terms of absolute combat power on the ground, but also in terms of power relative to other militaries. No one else can (right now) develop space power like we can. Every dollar’s worth of advantage that we gain now is worth three or more in a future where other nations are competing with us directly.

In my era, there were three locales in Germany that you were either preparing (and perhaps dreading) to go back to, just returning from, or in the midst of suffering through: Wildflecken, Hohenfels, and Grafenwoehr . Wildflecken was the least-improved and smallest of the three; Hohenfels was traditionally the spot for force-on-force maneuver. Graf was a series of firing ranges, from small arms to tank guns to anti-tank missiles.

Graf was not only a place to be cold in, bitch about, or not get laid at. It was a place of contradictions, of dichotomies peculiar to federal agencies or major military organizations: the training areas and ranges were all heavily wooded and accessible by dirt road ("tank trail") or helicopter, making everything seem distant and private, but the whole facility exists right next to a small fairy-tale of a town. Monstrous machines of war went from range to range, their crews perfecting their deadly trade, but everything stopped if a boar sow and her brood crossed the road in front of them. It was possible to be wet and sleepless for days on end as you trained for battle, but do bring your clubs because there's a golf course on the main post.

And now we can add a new contradiction: Russians at Graf. Stars & Stripes has coverage here of the first joint live-fire training in Germany between Russian and American forces.

Wildflecken and Graf had the ranges to train for repulsing invading Russian hordes, while Hohenfels had the physical space to simulate maneuvering against Russian hordes. Who'd a thunk that instead of invading, the Russian hordes would be invited?

I just ran across this enchanting little bit over at Silflay Hraka. Just the thing to brighten up a cloudy and blustery day:

The Franco-Prussian War - Lost. Germany first plays the role of drunk Frat boy to France's ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.

World War I - Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States. Thousands of French women find out what it's like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn't call her "Fraulein." Sadly, widespread use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French bloodline.

World War II - Lost. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain just as they finish learning the Horst Wessel Song.

The report of the civil engineers examining the World Trade Center attack came to the conclusion that thousands of lives were spared that might have been lost because people ignored the recommendations of emergency services and fled the building in a self-organizing and effective non-panic..

We know that US borders are porous, that major targets are largely undefended, and that the multicolor threat alert scheme known affectionately as "the rainbow of doom" is a national joke. Anybody who has been paying attention probably suspects that if we rely on orders from above to protect us, we'll be in terrible shape. But in a networked era, we have increasing opportunities to help ourselves. This is the real source of homeland security: not authoritarian schemes of surveillance and punishment, but multichannel networks of advice, information, and mutual aid.

This gets into what I (and of course many others) have been saying for some time - that an informed public (and an armed public, but that's not the point here) is the first and best line of defense against terrorist attacks. Note well that every major success in the WoT on our soil was won by ordinary citizens, not government agencies or law enforcement. (The shoe bomber, the wackjob at LAX, flight 93, the DC snipers.) In the case of the DC snipers, those assholes were nabbed despite the best efforts of Sheriff Moosehead and his assholes to conceal the very information that, once leaked, led to their arrest within hours.

Max Boot, author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (a fantastic book I can't recommend highly enough), has an op-ed in the LA Times about the dispute surrounding the role of women and gays in ground combat. If you'd asked me to guess how Boot came down on this issue, I'd have probably guessed he was against, but here he makes a strong argument for the integration of women and gays into frontline Army and Marine units.

But today, 212,000 women (15% of the active-duty force) play an integral role in the military. Keeping them out of combat is impossible, whatever the law says, because in a place like Iraq everyone is on the front lines. Thirty-five female soldiers have died in Iraq and almost 300 have been wounded.

Even as women have taken on roles once reserved for men, the disastrous consequences predicted by naysayers have not come to pass. In 2000, the late Col. David Hackworth wrote: "What the British longbow did to the French army at Crecy in 1346, the failed military policy on gender integration has done to the U.S. armed forces at the end of the 20th century: near total destruction." Yet in the last five years, "near total destruction" has been the fate not of the U.S. armed forces but the Taliban and Baathists they have battled.

... I also don't see why we are still barring all gays and lesbians from serving openly. Between 1994 and 2003, according to the Government Accountability Office, the military discharged 9,488 homosexuals, including 322 with badly needed knowledge of such languages as Arabic, Farsi and Korean. In other words, the fight against gay rights is hurting the fight against our real enemies. That's a compelling reason to change the law, even for those of us who used to be supporters of the gay ban.

I have in the past, like Boot, supported the ban on gays in the military. Like him, I was persuaded by the arguments of those opposing the ban that the mere presence of gay soldiers or marines would undermine morale and unit cohesion.

There certainly isn't any historical basis for banning gays from serving, and serving well. All the way back to the Sacred Band of Thebes, gays have often had a prominent role in combat. Our culture has had a long history of discrimination, if not revulsion, aimed at homosexuals; and it would not have made sense to sacrifice the fighting efficiency of the vast majority of straight soldiers to allow a relative few gays to serve. However, attitudes have continued to change, and I think that that argument no longer holds water, especially given the increasingly difficult task of maintaining recruiting levels, and attracting needed skills into the armed forces. We should eliminate all restrictions on gays serving in the military, and if necessary (though I think it won't be) implement the kinds fo policies that were used to integrate blacks back in the fifties.

Women are now in combat pretty much across the board. They are fighter pilots in the Navy and Air Force, and serve on warships in combat duty. They serve in support and combat service support roles in both the Marines and the Army, and the nature of the conflict in Iraq - largely absent of any traditional battle lines - means that they are on the front line no matter what DoD classification they have. That's all well and good. Boot's argument however, is that since they're already in combat, there's no point in making any sort of distinction at all. That's doesn't necessarily follow, though I admit that pulling women out of support units would be an enormous headache.

I don't think that women who volunteer for the armed services are necessarily lacking in the "fighting spirit" or "killer instinct" that male soldiers supposedly possess. A lot of evidence points to the fact that the majority of men in the armed forces are not natural born killers, and attempts to make them such are not very successful. Some sort of 80-20 rule seems to be operating - a large percentage of enemy deaths are likely caused by a relatively small number of American fighters. There is no inherent reason that women can't be in either group, and it is clear that both are needed for a successful military. (We might imagine that relatively fewer women will be in the natural killer category, but self selection would allow lots of them to end up in the military.)

My only real remaining problem with women in combat is the physical requirements, which are currently (to my understanding) significantly lower than for men. Raise those standards, at least for women wanting to serve in the Airborne or other elite units, and I'm cool with the whole project. I don't think the young straight men in the Army and Marines will have a problem with that, as long as they know their new comrades are going to be able to pull their own weight.

Really, we should do this not just because it fits in with our whole free-wheeling, I'm okay - you're okay American idiom. Just think about the salt and lemon juice rubbed into a paper cut feeling it would induce in an already pissed off jihadi to be captured by a squad composed largely of women and gays. That'll stick a spoke in their wheel.

Here's an interesting one: former Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers guitarist Jeff Baxter has become a high powered defense consultant. From Wizbang.

It appears that the great Homeland Security color-coded fear-o-meter is dead. I guess this means it's time to retire our Sesame Street-themed parody of same in the sidebar. Check this quote:

"The color-coded system does not work well and has undermined the department's credibility,'' said Patrick Kennedy, a Rhode Island Democrat. "What we have now is a system that tells us to be scared. That's it.''

Yup. Though I would sharpen that a bit to: we have a system that tells us to be scared that nobody pays a damn bit of attention to anyway.

The US Government: What... what? We're doin' somethin! See? Somethin! With charts and everything! Why do you hate our freedom?!?

A little while back, my wife and her band were on a local morning talk show. Since their slot on the show was at 8:30, and I was still unemployed at the time, we decided to make a day of it in downtown DC. As we wandered toward the Mall, we (I) immediately noticed that there were military vehicles parked in the area between Air and Space and the National Gallery. Eager to look at the instruments of death lovingly crafted by our great nation’s scientists and engineers, the three of us headed toward the scene.

The soldiers were very friendly and informative, and let my son sit in the driver’s seat of a MRLS, and even press the firing button. Sadly, the missiles were not live and we were unable to destroy the Department of Education, located only a couple blocks downrange. Here’s a pic of young John looking warlike:

But the interesting part was when we went through the big tent. The various services, agencies, departments, bureaus and whatnot gathered for Public Service Appreciation day all had booths in which they could tout their contributions to the nation’s security, safety and (in the case of the Marines and Airborne) general stance of extreme lethality and kickassitude. The Marines had a display of the various weapons that they use in persecuting our enemies. There were mortars, squad automatic weapons and at the end of the line, two corporals in charge of explaining and exhibiting an M-16 and its baby brother the M-4.

Being the kind of guy that I am, I asked the two what they thought of the new XM-8, proposed as a replacement for the M-16. Corporal #1 exhibited the extreme conservatism for which military establishments are famed:

“We fear change.”

He went on to opine that the new gun looks like his son’s super-soaker, and no right thinking Marine would want to carry one, though the pansies in the Army can do whatever they want. (I’m paraphrasing, but that was pretty much the thrust of his comments.)

Corporal #2 was more eloquent, but also more favorably disposed to the new weapon. He said that he had actually fired the weapon in Ashkanistan (his word) and was very impressed by the weapon’s recoil system.

“You can squeeze off three rounds on full auto before the barrel even starts to rise. Close groups, easy to handle. The only problem is, three rounds of five-five-six won’t put a jihadi down. Maybe if we could use hollow points or a soft nose bullet, the stopping power would be better.”

I asked about the 6.8mm round that was also being considered.

“That might be an improvement. But small caliber rounds don't work against fanatics.”

A hundred years ago, Marines had a problem with another fanatical insurgency, the Huks in the newly acquired Philippines. We invented an entirely new and larger type of handgun, the M1911 .45 semi-automatic, just because we needed something that would drop a crazed fanatic when the small caliber handgun just wasn’t hacking it. Perhaps it’s time to do that again. Shoot-to-wound strategies might encumber a reasonable army, where the enemy will spend time and effort to care for wounded comrades. Against frankly suicidal Moslem fundamentalists, reverting to a less nuanced shoot-to-kill policy might be a good idea.

All two of our regular readers (now dwindled to .0035 readers thanks to an extended four-way hiatus) will remember that back in the heady days of early 2003 when George Boosh was banging the war drum fast and hard (and with such a big stick!), I repeatedly voiced my opinion that I wasn't sure Iraq had anything to do with anything. At the time, the Weapons of Mass Destruction issue (which-- let's not rewrite history-- was repeated an awful lot of times by Those In Charge) didn't carry a lot of water with me, though on strict technical grounds I was willing to grant Bush and Condi and Donald the whole "repeated violations of UN resolutions" thing as casus belli.

But frankly, no matter how many resolutions were broken, at the time I just didn't see the point in libervading Iraq. Not that I thought it was a bad idea or morally "wrong"-- I simply didn't trust Bush and his crew that Iraq was a vital part of the War on Terror thingy, and I trusted them even less not to fuck it up. Iraq seemed more a sideshow, a distraction from the important things, old business between a tinpot dictator and the son of a man he one tried to have killed.

Now, two years later, I have a little crow to eat. Iraq continues to be a near-total mess (and please don't come back at me with the "most of the country is stable" line... I know that is technically true, if by "stable" you mean "the same mess it usedta be." But the light switches still don't work, and cars continue to explode.), but elections have been held that failed to fall apart as a total sham. That's great. Better yet, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, and even Egypt seem to be at the start of something good. Iraq may not have had any WMDs, and Saddam sure didn't have anything to do with the attacks on the US, but in a grand strategic sense, I am now willing to accept that Iraq makes long-range strategic sense in the so-called war on terror.

For now I'm only going to snack, have a crow amuse-bouche, as it were. Everyone's got a long row to hoe to get anywhere worthwhile yet, but so far the beginnings look good. If you told me two years ago that Iraq would have held uneventful elections and Palestine looked willing to come to the table, I doub't I'd believed you. But that's what has happened.

So, from the bottom of my heart: Mr. President, I'm sorry I doubted you and your grand plan. It actually looks like it could work. Now: you better not fuck this up. And hey, lay off the demagoguery at home. You get cocky, you get a boot in your ass.

[wik] ... and now some clarification is in order. I have this problem sometimes where, in order to make sure I say precisely what I mean to say and no more and no less, I weigh my thoughts down with about fifty pounds of hedgings, yes-buts, and preemptive objections. Unfortunately, the effect of this is generally to obscure the elegance of whatever it was I was saying in the first place.

With that in mind, here's the shorter version of the above post: I still don't like our President much, and his foreign policy vis a vis the Middle East sure scared the hell out of me (still does!). But, now that it looks like his actions are in fact partially responsible for the still-embryonic new fashion in democracy and not blowing shit up in the Middle East, I welcome the opportunity to be proven wrong. Let freedom reign! (whatever the eff that means, you half-articulate sham-Texan Connecticut cracker.)

[alsø wik] Via email, Buckethead graciously points out that "one of [my] beloved [sic] cobloggers also predicted this outcome," namely him. Well, yeah. B drank the Bush Admin kool-aid like it was Guyana 1978.

[alsø alsø wik] It occurs to me that comparing Buckethead's early-and-often advocacy of our President's policies to the behavior of Jim Jones' followers is a bit crass. Well, this is more crass: "Well, yeah. B clamped onto the Bush party line like it was a whiskey tit fulla Booker Noe."

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] Or this: "Well, yeah. Hey, B: try not to get that stuff in your eye when you're done. I hear it burns."

Loyal readers and minions alike know that in my brief military career I was one of these. It kind of looked like that too, except there were no women (not in echelons below division), no banks of monitors, and rarely was everyone dry. And substitute the cozy bunker pictured for some damp canvas bolted to the back of an M577 and stretched to form a sort of tent, which had the improbable ability to drip cold water on me, wherever I sat beneath it and even when it wasn't raining.

But I digress. I worked for a year for a super guy who had been a Marine in an earlier life and, with his age advancing, decided cushy Army life might be more forgiving to his body. He cared about his people and was a genuinely funny guy. Not in a rubber-chicken way, in a twisted way. We got along great.

At one point, he subscribed to a classified publication produced by some civilian agency or other. Intelligence people spend alot of time reading, usually DoD stuff, the intelligence products you might expect, Army regs, and open source stuff like Jane's books. This pub I'm remembering was dedicated to discussing existing research on and prototype methods for what it called "soft kill", or incapacitating an enemy without necessarily physically destroying his people or his stuff. And it was a hoot.

I don't remember most of them, but they were pretty outlandish even conceptually; actually delivering some of these ideas or devices successfully were pretty improbable. Most of it was little more than banana-in-the-tailpipe stuff. Sure that commie division's independent tank batallion is useless if they can't start the tanks, but it was quite obvious that destroying them with conventional munitions was a whole lot easier than sneaking a specially trained mischief team into their garrison to piss in all the gas tanks. My boss got this pub purely for the entertainment value.

Well, the past is present. The New Scientist via Drudge has a short piece about some interesting soft-kill projects purportedly considered by the DoD. Personally I like the concept of the munition that, once delivered, is irresistable to vermin and would thereby turn the bad guys' position into a big rat place.

But for style, the best one has to be the homo-bomb. Check it out here.

Well, police of course!

Secret police!

Is it just me, or does reviving in Iraq the "Elite Death Squad" strategem (last seen ruining the credibility of the US and several sovereign governments in Latin America) seem like the king of all bad ideas?

I mean, let's start with the fact that these squads will be hitmen, trained and initially financed by the US military to whack malcontents, rabble-rousers, and yes, hopefully some real actual terrorists and their kingpins. (Don't you love that word, kingpin?) Then, consider that the use of Elite Whacking Squadrons amounts to an admission (no!) that certain decisions regarding the war in Iraq, how to fight it, and how it's going might possibly not have turned out so well as some cheery folks might have been saying (no!!). So now, they're calling in the Whacking Squadrons.

So right there we've got 1) the US military helping to "whack" guys who may or may not be shady, who may or may not be threats (who cares!?) and 2) the impression that said Elite Iraqi Whacking Squadrons are cat's paws of the US military. Tell me: how is that a good idea?

The United States and Iraq need to win against the 'insurgency.' But not this way. Not this way.

Kriston at Begging To Differ says it better and at greater length.

[wik] McQ of QandO agrees as well, and also brings up the Vietnam-era "Project Phoenix" as an example of how easily such projects can go very, very wrong.

For centuries, before gunpowder dominated the battlefield, the trebuchet was the most powerful siege weapon known to man. Essentially, the trebuchet is a gigantic seesaw. A 250 pound rock projectile sits on one end, and on the other, an immense counterweight. The longer, missile end of the trebuchet is winched down; and just like when you were sitting on the seesaw and the fat kid jumped on the other end, when it is released, the counterweight flips the missile hundreds of yards to (hopefully) hit the target.

A group of enterprising engineering geeks have endeavored to create a trebuchet simulator. With this nifty timewaster, you can adjust the mass of the projectile and the counterweight; and change the launch angle, counterweight height, wind and even gravity. Test your engineering and medieval geekiness against the distance, power and accuracy challenges.

I had the opportunity to play with a very small but nevertheless very real trebuchet a while back, and this is almost as fun. Though it doesn't throw watermelons or footballs. Thanks to A Voyage to Arcturus for the link.

Loyal reader Othershoe shares this AP photo of a Mosul sniper in action with his nifty lens-cover. Nothing like a sniper with a sense of humor:

Today marks the 229th birthday of the US Marine Corps.

Serving Marines and former Marines gather on this day to raise a hot toddy to toast the Corps. Even veterans of long ago wars and disconnected from fellow comrades might hoist a drink on this day, even by themselves. See some pics from Iraq of the USMC celebration here. They don't get the rum there, but they do get the pleasure of the Black Watch Regiment's company.

I could riff on the capabilities of Marine units, the deeply ingrained sense of Corps history and honor, and the very real bonds between Marine veterans of all ages and conflicts. But I won't, because I wasn't one and am therefore not fit to tell the tale.

I will simply sum it up thus: chicks dig them, men want to be them, and hippies are scared of them. High praise all 'round.

Happy Birthday, Marine Corps. May your next year be as full of ass-kicking as your last.

You don't have to be an Arab trader, a thrifty Yankee, or a corporate titan to value a good deal.

Who among us has not wished for a lower car payment, or a more cost-effective set of wheels? For the stump-jumping set, how long have you pined to take your H2 off-road for real, without needing the resources of a corporate sponsor to pay for the damage? Can any one of you reading this now honestly say you have no need at all for a tracked vehicle? Of course not.

For alot less cost and effort than you might think, you can drive away in an old US 2 1/2 ton truck (the venerable and ubiquitous "deuce-and-a-half"), various Germanic surplus trucks ("Pinzgauers"- these things kick viele Arsch), an old tracked tank destroyer (only driven to church and back-promise!), and even like-new Austrian assault bicycles. Dealers' prices too much for you? Put in your own bid for everything from aircraft parts to semi-trailers.

The Pinzes especially are super cheap.  Even the refurbished ones are quite reasonable, both in terms of price and therefore in terms of not being afraid to really beat the shit out of them the way these things should be. Don't be surprised to see one someday around my house with a snowplow on it.

For the week ending 11Oct04:

Spotlight Sinai: At least thirty are dead and well over 100 injured following three bombings at two resort hotels in the Egyptian Sinai near the Israeli border. Most of the victims were Israelis on vacation. A previously unknown group, Jama'a Al-Islamiya Al-Alamiya (World Islamist Group) claimed responsibility, but our old pals Al Qaida are now the most likely suspects according to US, Israeli and Egyptian security forces, with possible connections to Palestinian groups or domestic Egyptian Islamic terrorists (the ones who did the Luxor hit back in the late nineties.) Names that have surfaced in the discussion include bin Laden's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri and Jordanian cum-Iraqi Al Qaida terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi.

It seems that the Islamic terrorist world is linking arms and standing shoulder to shoulder to fight both the Little Satan and the Great Satan. One could almost think this great coming together - this laying down of internal disputes to fight the common enemy - was a noble thing if it didn’t involve the surprise bombing of innocents. I think that the terrorists are going to continue to have a serious public relations problem. Maybe a little nonviolent resistance would get them sympathy from people outside the Chomskyite left.

Spotlight Iraq: Briton Kenneth Bigly was unsurprisingly beheaded by yet another group of Islamic funlovers. It seems as though Bigley made a last ditch effort to escape but didn’t make it out. Several Turks were also beheaded this week, showing that Islamic fundamentalism is essentially nihilistic, and will attack anything that looks at it funny.

Spotlight Spain: In what is described as a “fit of cannibalism” (as opposed to the chronic, continuing cannibalism) British ex-robber Paul Durant killed, dismembered and ate British tourist Karen Durrell. Said Durant,

"Before I killed Karen I told her I had come to Spain where I was going to kill and eat pedophiles. My mental stage was breaking down at this stage. I believed God had delivered her to me…"

As laudable as his desire to end paedophilia is, we can only conclude that his mission was tragically unsuccessful.

Spotlight Hanoi: Distressed that former colonial subjects the Vietnamese are no longer speaking French, French President Jacques Chirac has declared that the world’s cultures are in danger of being “choked” by the American cultural hegemony. Likening this to an ecological holocaust, Chirac warned that the loss of global cultural diversity would be a “catastrophe.” Therefore, he argued, the French are right to stand up to the brutish Americans, and continue to consume American movies, jeans, cigarettes, music, cars and TV in huge quantities. To counteract the threat of a French cultural resurgence, we should expand the successful EuroDisney program, and build a Disneyworld in every single fucking French City, town, hamlet and village.

[wik] All of this puts France below Singapore – which while only the size of a piece of snot, is worth significantly more than a heaping pile of shit.

Spotlight Egypt: Back to the surreal and twisted world of the Religion of Peace, an Egyptian Intellectual has accused former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu of planning the 9/11 attacks. Sadly, these confused ravings are more common than many in the western media will ever admit.

Okay, not in the literal sense. I got a case of loghorrhea you wouldn't believe. But honestly, words fail me.

"Most of the prisoners being held at Guantánamo Bay, the US military base on Cuba, are expected to be released or transferred to their own countries, the deputy commander of the unit that runs the base has said.

"Of the 550 that we have, I would say most of them, the majority of them, will either be released or transferred to their own countries," he told the FT.

"Most of these guys weren't fighting. They were running. Even if somebody has been found to be an enemy combatant, many of them will be released because they will be of low intelligence value and low threat status.

"We don't have a level of evidence to feel that we can be confident to prosecute them [all]. We have guys here who have never told us anything, except to say that they want to cut off the heads of the infidels if they get a chance," Gen Lucenti added.

And it took three years to figure this out? What I have trouble understanding is how after three years in the pen

Brig Gen Jay Hood, commander of the task force that runs the camps [can claim] "people here are of tremendous intelligence value", and the US still has much to learn from them.

Like what? Where Osama bin Laden used to live? How much an AK-47 cost in Syria three years ago? The names of four guys who either died or disappeared three years ago? I don't get it. The entire Git-mo enterprise stunk to me, and I'm disappointed, irritated, and outraged in that tired, I-expected-this-so-what-the-hell kind of way that it hasn't paid off like Bush & Co said it would.

Donald Rumsfeld, 04Oct04: "I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links [al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein].''

Donald Rumsfeld 04Oct04: " regrettably was misunderstood."

Really? Well... you didn't stutter.

But enough with the cheap shots. Our own Buckethead has adequately established that links existed between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, much like links exist between me and the head of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, whoever he or she is, whose trains carry me to work every day. But those links are neither systemic nor enduring, and it seems that even Rumsfeld finally has to pony up the troof.

But what of the rhetorical linkages between the two great Satans? Repeatedly in the debate last Thursday, President Bush said "Saddam Hu-- Osama bin Laden," as if the two men were, not only two peas in a pod but actually conceptually the exact same enemy of America. It's impossible to tell whether Bush actually believes that howler, but the mistake is casually revealing. For those of us who continue to believe that Iraq is a sideshow, a distraction to the "War on Terror" we're supposed to be up in, it's kinda horrifying. For those of us who want the President-- whoever he or she is-- to be capable, however haltingly, of articulating who we're dealing with and why, it's really horrifying. On Thursday, Bush did nothing to reassure me that he has any defense beyond the standard talking points for his actions. I went into the debate feeling fairly hostile to both jokers; I came out fed up completely with W.

If the CIA says one thing over and over, and the President's folks say another opposite thing, over and over, what time will the first train get to Altoona?

It's apparently Poland-bashing day here at the Ministry. Oh, well. The Poles were so hurt at the fearsome snubbing given to them by John Kerry last Thursday that they're packing up and going home. Very slowly.

... actually, Poland has announced that by the end of next year they'll be out of Iraq, ending a three-year commitment. Well, ok. Three years is a plenty long time to occupy a country, and it's unreasonable to expect them to stay in there indefinitely. Besides, I hear that some of our other allies in the Great Coalition are clamoring for a turn: Moldova, Grenada, the Central African Republic, and Madagascar, come on down!