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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! April 22, 2005 From the FrontBy GreyhawkQ: What happens when someone with zero knowledge of the subject matter (but lots of pent-up hate for bushitlerchimpymonkey and his juniorhitler Rumsfeld) attempts to write a sitrep on Iraq? A: This. I'm stunned by the logical leaps taken; regardless of the subject you've got to support your conclusion with facts, provide a road map from point "A" to point "B" - but that's a highway he doesn't have under control. I'd advise Steve to stick to subjects he's familiar with, but there's no evidence in the post that the author even grasps the fundamentals of presenting a convincing argument in favor of his position on anything. Boosted by a Daily Kos link he's got a few cheerleaders in comments though. Some of them even claim to have an uncle's cousin's boss' wife who's girlfriend says she heard a guy at another table at lunch say his kid's gym teacher's sister knows a guy in Iraq and it's all true. Q2: What happens when one of the hundreds of blogging soldiers serving in Iraq finds Steve's post? Free Speech from those who help make it possible, Stevie. Be glad you live in a country where soldiers only "shoot you down" with a keyboard and a modem. Not everyone does. Side note: The maps and photos Steve Gilliard presents in his piece are "hot links" to the sites that host them - in the map example it's Global Security. This means that the original sites bear the bandwidth burden every time someone views Steve's page. Bandwidth = cost; this means the original sites are paying for it. Steve's on blogger, so he could host those images himself for free if he wanted. His site is also supported by advertising, so he's stealing to make profit. Not just on that post, btw, he rips off every picture he has on his site. His posts are nothing more than drool fuel for the unhinged, but that practice is just low-rent sleazy. Update: I've never seen a timlier magazine cover... Posted by Greyhawk / April 22, 2005 6:00 PM | Permalink 7 TrackBacksMy buddy Kev has been sending occasional updates while deployed to Iraq and apparently the UW protestors chafed his cones a bit, but I can understand why. Read More Greyhawk at Mudville brings this issue to light and covers the flank of another MilBlogger (we'll get to that in a minute). Read More Thomas X. Hammes, author of "The Sling and the Stone," which I am plowing through, had an editorial in yesterday's New York Times argues that the war is not yet over by a damn sight, as the old saying goes:... Read More Ansar al-Sunnah (Islamic Army in Iraq), an ally of al Qaeda in Iraq, has claimed credit for shooting down a privately owned Bulgarian Mi-8 helicopter. While the exact cause of the downing has not been determined (machinegun fire, RPG or... Read More Yesterday, Grewhawk from The Mudville Gazette linked to a sitrep on Iraq from the perspective of antiwarrior Steve Gillian. The author clearly has no grasp on military affairs. The piece was poorly written, and contained bad grammar, broken sentences a... Read More
Greyhawk (and Mrs. Greyhawk) and Mudville Gazette, posts an introduction to blogging, and a how to for those who may be considering taking the plunge themselves. (http://www.mudvillegazette.com/) Read More 13 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
What a clown.
It is always good to see well done whack-a-mole treatment of another defeatist.
I trackbacked with some fine words for the anti-war protestors at the University of Wisconsin from my buddy Kev in Iraq with the WI Guard. Blue Skies to 1/128 INF.
Cordially,
Uncle J
Here's a map. This proves we're losing. Here's a picture of a horse. This proves cars will never catch on. Here's a picture of a frog wrapped in tinfoil riding a bicycle. Fire Rumsfeld.
A guy at work told me his sister's husband's mother's hairdresser knows about some dude who said his neighbor's cable guy said his cousin's best buddy from High School was in Iraq or Afghanistan or something and half the toilets in camp are stopped up.
But Fox News just reports on the Pope.
Victor Davis Hanson has a good article today in the National Review Online.
"Winning the War, But don't forget the rules of the strange conflict!"
http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson042205.html
Steve's "Analysis" (in italics) and my reply:
Now, the warbloggers, who are fuzzy on the details of the actual war, like to believe that we're winning in Iraq. They're about the only ones who do.
Funny, it seems people like Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, etc. are no longer discussing Iraq. I wonder why? Even the spate of media "what if Bush was right?" articles disproves his assertions that we warblogger are misguided.
A quick glance at the Iraq Order of Battle shows NG units carrying a major portion of the fighting.
Where's the map? How can I glance at it? Even if NG units are baring the brunt in the Order of Battle, what does this prove?
And notice something else: all roads lead to Baghdad. So if you wage a road denial campaign against the US military, every attack in Baghdad has a multiplier. Because it slows down the whole network.
Is that supposed to be intelligent and insightful? I still don't know what that means.
You have declining enlistments, recruiters going AWOL, up to 5000 desertions, massive complaints about equipment and supply.
Sources would be nice, but since he isn't discussing facts, I won't ask for them. Soldiers always complain about equipment and supply, the day they stop is the day we have real problems.
The scarest military resource is not armor, but trained combat infantry.
I'll agree that we need more infantry units in the active Army, but wasn't the leftist war-cry last fall the lack of armor for troops, including armored Hummers? Now armor is secondary? Which is it?
If dadmanly didn't do such a fine job at fisking that post, it would have been a fun project.
It is humorous to read people that have no idea about military matters discuss them in an "expert fashion", in their minds at least. It is sad when the KOSsacks get a hold of it and treat it as intelligent.
Stevie-O's nonsensical post is the result of needing to blame everything on BushChimpler.
As to the availability of unexploded ordnance in the follow on emails between Dadmanly and Steve, let me say this:
I lived on Okinawa in 62-64. even in 3rd grade, I was made aware of what could be foound. Oh, yeah...there was an armed force of a soverign nation there, who did surrender. I found a grenade and some rifle rounds.
I lived on Guam in 67-71. I found several things, but the largest was the 8" naval gun projectile, on a hill on the side of the Orote Point Airfield (It was a Japanese airbase, but the US didn't use it), which was the peninsula around Apra Harbor. All those years after WWII, there was ordnace laying around in the "boonies" where a war had been.
We didn't get lectures on fireworks safety back then and there, we got the EOD techs with the posters of kids with lost hands because they decided to play with this stuff.
Iraq has had a few wars in the last two decades...surely some of the ordnance came from there....
Heck, never mind WWII EOD being discovered, how's this for perspective...
http://www.archaeology.org/9611/newsbriefs/civilwar.html
A cache of 63 unexploded Civil War-era mortar bombs has been discovered by sport divers in Mirror Lake, near Calais, Vermont. Arthur Cohn, director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, working with Towney Anderson, a state historic preservation officer, in cooperation with other state and federal agencies, recovered the ammunition, which was still live. Three years ago the same divers found a cache of 93 bombs, which were determined to be a hazard and destroyed by the police.
While that was in 1996, today a cannon shell was found in Vicksburg.
http://www.picayuneitem.com/articles/2005/04/22/news/06shell.txt
Workers digging a trench for a new sewer line in Vicksburg have unearthed an unexploded Civil War-era cannon shell.
The shell was found Wednesday in the front yard of a home in the Wildwood neighborhood.
An ordnance disposal team from Camp Shelby removed the shell.
L.W. "Bump" Callaway, director of Warren County Emergency Management, said finding leftover explosives from the 1863 siege of Vicksburg isn't uncommon, but he said folks should be cautious because many such rounds are unstable.
Beg to report, sir, that the veterans, both In Country, and others, have arrived, and are carrying the fight to the foe... The horse's mouth, as it were, with the whole danged cavalry with 'em... (and one slightly confused Marine... That would be me... Where'd all the horses come from?)
Cheers!
Oh, yes, and don't forget areas of France that are still unavailable, due to UXO from WWI.
Then take a trip to the "no more land mines" world and know they were sown in many places, and still manage to take tooes, a foot or worse even now in SE Asia, as well as other places around the world....
Damn armchair generals. He should ask the folks who've been there what's what. But of course, we're all brainwashed drones so what do we know....?
Now look at all the traffic you've given this attention seeking anti-war degenerate. It's no different than the jerk with the forsakethetroops site. Don't give him the added traffic for one thing he makes more money that way on his ads.
I read Steve's post and scanned through some of the comments. I don't know what's worse: that someone like Steve can turn few facts and poor logic into a rationalization of US defeat in Iraq, or that so many others are so willing to believe it.
Steve does indeed suffer 'blogorrhea' (Diarrhea of the keyboard, combined with constipation of thought). Another self-taught 'expert' with absolutely no personal experience with the subject matter. Something along the lines of the new Pope writing a travel guide to the best 'red light' districts in Italy.