Me? No - I'm just a Carrier

[Greyhawk]

'Cause I loves providing links to full videos available free online, here's Carrier. Thrill to the true life adventures of real kids who never learned to read good and now are forced to operate a Nuculer Aircraft Carrier as it travels the world. (It's a Tee Vee show - minimal reading required.)

Re-Americanization?

[CDR Salamander]

Sometimes when you call, your partner just doesn't have the hand they were signaling.

The idea of giving the U.S. military more authority in areas of Afghanistan now under NATO command is "worth taking a look at," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday.
...
"I think that this is a matter that is going to get looked at over probably some period of time," he said. "It will require consultation with our allies, particularly our partners in regional command south," referring to an area of southern Afghanistan that is currently under the command of a Canadian general and is due to switch to a Dutch commander before the end of this year.
...
Changing the command structure to give a U.S. general more control in the south would, in effect, mark a partial "re-Americanization" of the combat mission. That could be politically controversial, given U.S. interests in maintaining close ties with NATO in fighting terrorism.

Profiling a MilBlogger: Carla from Some Soldier’s Mom

[Mrs Greyhawk]

VA Mortgage Center interviews our beloved "MilBlogs" contributor Carla from Some Soldier’s Mom

Profiling a MilBlogger returns this week as our staff sat down with a fantastic female milblogger - Carla from Some Soldier’s Mom. Let’s see what she had to say shall we:

You Served: What led you to be a Military Blogger?
Some Soldier’s Mom: When my son was getting ready to deploy to Iraq in late 2004, I was surfing the web to find information on what he might experience and what parents’ go through and any useful information that I could use.
I found a number of military blogs (milblogs) by soldiers but nothing from a parent, so I started Some Soldier’s Mom (www.somesoldiersmom.blogspot.com) as a way to share what I thought was a unique and important experience — to let people know what it was like to have a child at war.

YS: Do you feel that being a female Military Bloggers adds a unique perspective to your blog? If yes, how so?
SSM: Definitely yes. While I can be strident in my views about the war on terror and the necessity of our Country’s mission in Iraq, I am a mother first. It is a unique role — we experience emotions and have a perspective different from the soldiers (who can’t understand why we worry or cry so much) and wives (who willingly took on the role of military wife and has a daily relationship with their soldier).

I have written that a parent sending their son or daughter to war is one of the most counter-intuitive experiences a person can ever have: you spend 18 (or 19, 20… ) years protecting them and making sure that they are never too hot or too cold, that they are protected from biting bugs and making sure they are not anywhere that people might be shooting at them. Then you are called upon to be brave and [somewhat] cheerful as you send your child off to a place where it is always too hot or too cold, there are bugs the size of small dogs and people are shooting at them and trying to blow them up.

I also feel that female milbloggers bring a view not driven by the battlefield experience but by the support role expected of families back home. I have never been to war, but I have sent a child to war.

This lady is awesome but that's nothing new to folks here.

Read the rest of the interview here

Duh King

[Greyhawk]

Stephen King:

I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got, the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that. It's, it's not as bright. So, that's my little commercial for that.

Does reading Stephen King count as "reading"?

More writing here:

...on Monday, NewsBusters reported King's disgraceful comments -- made in front of a group of high school students at the Library of Congress in April -- about people who can't read having few options other than to enlist in the Army.

This surprisingly prompted King to post a blurb at his website encouraging readers to send a message to me stating, "Hi, Noel—Stephen King says to shut up and I agree."

Now, the AP has expressed its view of this squabble...

A couple observations from the video:

1. Stephen King looks a lot like Janet Reno.

2. The kids who were "listening" to him looked bored as hell.

Footnote for younger readers: Stephen King used to be a famous writer and had many top selling books in the pre-internet era. Janet Reno was Attorney General under Bill Clinton.

Update - and apologies to Stephen King fans, I should have also explained this originally: "In the Federal Government of the United States, the Attorney General is a member of the Cabinet and as head of the Department of Justice is the top law enforcement officer and lawyer for the government." It is not a military rank.

Please stop sending me "wut iz terny genrul, u fashist pig?" emails.

The 28 Percenters

[Greyhawk]

The 28 Percenters

A dubious claim reappears...

A March survey from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press discovered that just 28 percent of Americans knew the approximate number of U.S. deaths in the war.

...as it probably will again and again. I'm not even sure "reappears" is the proper term. Did it ever go away? It's one of the many urban legends of the Iraq war, most of which fit on bumper stickers and few of which ever tend to go away. This one has an added element that might enhance its longevity - it indicates Americans are ignorant, and few reporters can pass on an opportunity to present a story that indicates Americans are ignorant.

But they aren't - or at least aren't as ignorant as some reporters would like you to believe. The Pew research was poorly presented - if not poorly done. The most accurate statement that can be made regarding the results of the poll is that at the time, no more than 63% of Americans knew the approximate number of U.S. deaths in the war:

The number 4,000 is the correct answer. There's no arguing that point. Nor would I contend that Americans are really paying attention to the Iraq war - most who could tell you the exact body count probably couldn't tell you anything else, even the name of one of the fallen. (Office watercooler experiment: next time you hear someone cite the death toll in Iraq, ask them to name one of the 4,000 and the circumstances of their death. Be polite. If they fail, provide a couple [here's one for a start - here's another] - see how long they're willing to listen.)

It's likely that most who got the wrong answers - and even some who got the right one - did so as a result of a wild guess. But it's also likely that many who answered the question were aware that the number was "three thousand and something" and answered accordingly ("3,000"). While not sure of the exact number they know a bit more about the situation than Pew (and others) would like to give them credit for - given that "3,000" was the most common response I find this a very likely hypothesis.

But many of those who answered "3,000" might have been even more aware of Iraq casualties than the Pew researchers themselves. While 4,000 US troops have died in Iraq, the actual number who have been killed in combat is 3,261. But if they answered based on this figure they didn't read the question in the same way the pollsters wrote it - so shame on them. (I'm not arguing that this is a potentially large percentage - obviously if only 28% can identify the number of American troops who've died in Iraq, few could tell how many died from combat in Iraq.)

Combine the percentage of Americans who chose "3,000" (some of whom were "right") and the percentage who chose "4,000" (some of whom guessed) in Pew's survey and you have 63% - a number that probably at best serves as an "upper bound" to the percentage of Americans who know anything at all about the Iraq war.

And, in fact (and in exact opposite of what Pew claimed) twice as many Americans over-estimated the number than under-estimated.

Which leaves us with the numbers of folks who were completely out to lunch: "11% said there have been 2,000 deaths. Just under a quarter (23%) said the number of fatalities is closer to 5,000. "

I would expect to see 10% on either fringe of the bell curve, so I find that final figure the most curious of all. What could possibly explain why twice as many Americans significantly over estimate the numbers than under estimate?

But none of that will fit on a bumper sticker, and few reporters will ever bother to fact check (or even offer brief critical examination of) the 28% claim. I find that particularly ironic in that they are usually blamed for the pitiably low numbers - in spite of the fact that death tolls are the only thing many news organizations ever report from Iraq.

But again, that's not going to stop them from claiming that Americans are ignorant. I suppose if you believe them then they might be right.