And that's exactly the attitude that Europe will never in a million years understand.

I'm reminded of a sort of "confidence in America" survey I participated in once. There were quite a few people in the group who were rabid leftists, "Chimpy-McSmirkhitler-stole-the-election!" nutjobs. Even so, out of 25 different sociopolitical structures, our military was the only one which scored a perfect 100%.

I love the people in our armed services so much. I'm so awed, proud, honored, humbled, grateful... and so many other things I don't even have the words to begin to express. God bless them all.

It is truly humbling and awe-inspiring. God bless those people.

Those men just so throw into sharp relief what a no-good piece of shit sissy boy I am... and I mean that in the best possible way.

just wow.

How do you lose your leg "just above the ankle?"

Above the ankle = leg, below the ankle = foot.

Unless you mean what caused the injury, in which case since it happened in Afghanistan my WAG would be a mine.

Tough break no matter what. Humbling to see a guy come back with that kind of attitude

Humbling to see a guy come back with that kind of attitude--Alex

Yes,VERY !!

I emailed this story to FRONTLINE with a letter about their piece last week about the psychological trauma and PTSD of our troops, asking them to extol the courage, sacrafice and dedication of our troops. Will they do it? What do you think?

America still produces MEN.

I can't believe it: National Pinko Radio is even reporting this one.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4522136

Bit of a shift from their endless doom, gloom and low morale stories of months past. I may be starting to believe this whole "stampede" thing.

Ace,

It's not the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave for nothing. America does still produce Men.

The rest of us should be ashamed they have to go back because the military can't meet recruiting goals. I guess that says something about the rest of us.

God Bless Them and the crutches they walked in on.

Subsunk

The rest of us should be ashamed they have to go back because the military can't meet recruiting goals. I guess that says something about the rest of us.

Huh?!? I think you missed the point. These men did not *HAVE* to go back, they *CHOSE* to go back. This doesn't say anything about us, but it says a lot about their character.

It's the atypical response from these guys. I don't know what the fuss is about.

Because when some commie reporter gets hit, all they do is whine about it for the rest of their lives.

I think it would be safe to say that an amputee that demands to get back in the war wants to meet some terrorists in a dark alley, and we should let him.

I am extremely proud of the small part I played as a Marine in Iraq in 2003. A huge part of that pride is knowing I fought alongside heroes!.

The good work we've begun over there is not yet finished. But thanks to the honor of men like these, it WILL BE SOON!

SLA Marshall, I think wrote that only 10% of all troops actually fight offensively, and they inflict almost all of the casualties on the enemy. The other 90% tends to duck for cover or spray badly-aimed fire while keeping behind cover.

I don't know if that's still true, or if modern American troops exceed that fighter-ratio. I don't want to malign our boys.

But whatever fraction of our soldiers actually wants to fight offensively and kill bad guys, these cats are obviously among them.

Each one of these dudes brings testicular fortitude to a new level.

Subsunk, I'm going to assume you're not a troll, provisionally. I don't know about feeling ashamed by not being in the services (since while I'm relatively fit/strong, I can't run with cadaver tissue in my leg), but I admire the hell out of these guys for sheer grit. They may see it as just getting back to make sure their buddy's safe, but to the rest of us, it's nothing short of inspirational.

But Subsunk, keep it up with the bullshit about recruitment goals/guilt and I reserve the right to amend my opinion of your trollhood.

Kadnine: Thank you for your service.

Ace, do you mean the "tooth to tail" (or vice versa) ratio? Or do you mean the grit of the soldiers in the field?

If it's the former, the Marine's tooth to tail is 3:1. In theater, that's 3 combat marines per support marine. That's amazing, but due to the fact that the Navy carts the Marines around and absorbs many of the support roles. see this article

The army's is reversed to some extent, but I can't find figures to be sure. In any event, I doubt the Army is so bloated as to have a 1:10 ratio of tooth to tail.

If you're thinking the latter (i.e. that only 10% of our comabat troops are effective when the shit hits the fan), I'd guess you're just dead wrong on that.Pretty much every soldier in our combat arms units are trained not to "spray and pray," and that training is augmented by the 3 round burst on the M4s and M16A4s. Short, controlled bursts.

Either way, I think your opinion might need a bit of revision.

Early in the war in Iraq, when Jessica Lynch came home and responded tepidly about her experience, I wondered if we could win the war, if too much recruitment hinged on kids seeking college money without understanding exactly what they were trading for it. Since I don't get my news from Dan or Pete or Tom, I've been able to hear of dedication like this, and it is heartening.

hobgoblin,

No, I mean -- and remember, this is based on the WWI experience -- that in a unit of 20 combat soldiers, only about 2 would actually fight offensively, and they would inflict most of the damage.

But that anecdote is a little dated, because it was studies like that that made the Army realize that the people most likely to fight hard were those armed with the Browning Automatic Rifle rather than a simple rifle, and based on that, the military began its long process of recognizing that the accuracy of the rifle was less conducive to a soldier's morale than the rat-a-tat-tat of an automatic weapon.

It may be that a much higher percentage of soldiers now do really offensive fighting; could be as high as 90% for American troops.

Anyway, whatever it is, these guys are obviously not going to be the "duck and fire blindly" types.

Oh, I understand now ace.

Also, you gotta figure that WWII was a conscript force (draft actually started before Pearl Harbor, so yeah, there you'd have a point.

I'd argue it's different with a volunteer force, and it seems you'd agree.

Anyways, for sheer brutality of pseudo-combat, check out Taranto today (last item):

We don't read Playgirl magazine, but thank goodness Matt Drudge does

Snap!

"Oh no you di'int!"

"And that's exactly the attitude that Europe will never in a million years understand."

Well, before you cast it as "us Americans" vs. the Euroweenies, the "hard core military" that fights and goes back to battle on leg stumps is now only 1/4000th of the American population. The rest of us are expected to wave the flag, enjoy our tax cuts, spend & travel, and do something nice for our neighbors as "Our Part". Since the other 99.8% of Americans have done just that, I guess we can pull out our MasterCard and expect a soldier's tribute for us fighting radical Islam by buying neat Chinese stuff.

I think of all the Americans who have prospered in wartime waving the amputee back to Iraq at the airport.......

"Hey stumpy - you may have lost a leg, but I got a 36" Japanese -Chinese plasma TV to do my part with my tax cuts! We both shared in the burdens of freedom! Let me wave my made-in-China US Flag as you go off on your 3rd year-long combat tour since 9/11."

hobby,

Two cool chicks sent that Playgirl link to me, and I just couldn't bring myself to post it.

They were both like, "Why?"

Duh.

Talk to me about the editor of Gent proclaiming his support for the GOP and we'll talk.

discretion is sometimes the better part of valor, ace.

and cedarass, keeping that in mind I will simply GAZE at you.

/ blink, blink

Cedarford, at the risk of even bothering, what the f is your point?

Cops are killed in the line of duty all the time; are you saying that we cannot truly honor their sacrifice unless, what, we increase trade tarriffs, increase taxes, and all agree to share in the pain by, say, having a finger or two lopped off?

What is your major malfunction?

I have come to the conclusion that we are really dealing with cedarTARD. How else can you explain his obsession to make every topic into a rant against the Joooos, Chinese merchandise and tax cuts? I worked with a guy once who would throw his soda can in the garbage can, take it out, then throw it in again and he would do this 50 times without stopping. He'd like go in a trance. This is how I picture CedarTARD at his computer.

ACE - the problem I have is that so few Americans are actually sacrificing that we are essentially no different than the so-called "Euroweenies" we accuse of being unwilling to sacrifice. This is a guns and butter war, where borrowed money is providing the tax cut butter - the bread at the circuses pandering - while the "guns" part is done by a small fraction of the population that has sacrificed enormously. (So much so that the Reserves, Army, Marines report enlistments way down because they see the military holding the bag of shit year after year while the rest of the country spends and parties.) Many people don't know a single person in their sphere that knows of anyone who has served. in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The military is overstretched, has been for 2 years given our commitments, but any new staffing might scale back the tax cuts, so the answer has been to burn out Reservists time, involuntarily extend enlistee time with "stop-loss" orders, and short cycle units back into combat by deferring normal training and back home family time. And the soldiers have regularly been lied to on deployment schedules.

Navy shipbuilding has been cut over in half. AF tanker procurement is on hold. The Navy is being forced to go from 12 to 11 carrier battle groups . And elite soldiers are losing the high morale they had after Afghanistan as many have spent 30+ months out of 42 in combat duty....they are just tapped too much and no new troops have been created until Congressional Republicans forced Bush to last October.

Am I suggesting that we need to scale back the beloved tax cuts favoring the wealthy a bit? Spread the tribulations and sacrifice to a broader part of the American population to help ease our overextended military and stop borrowing so much from China?

You bet I am!

There he goes again!

Hi Ace and all-

The SLA Marshall "Study" you mention has been pretty well debunked. See: http://www.ku.edu/carrie/archives/wwi-l/2004/03/msg00244.html

This doesn't change the thrust of your posting, which I find awesomely inspiring.

Oooops wrong reference- should be : http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/03autumn/chambers.pdf

Quite a good article, actually.

LOL Ronald Reagan!

Cedarford, did a rich Jew fuck your girlfriend, or what?

I love the implication that increasing taxes necessarily increases tax revenues.

It actually works the other way most of the time.
Stunting the economy may feel like sacrifice, but it doesn't actually do anything to help our military men and women.

Whoops-
Almost forgot the insult.
Cedarford you racist twit.

Actually it must have been a rich, neocon, Chinese merchandise importing Jew who likes tax cuts and owns a Japanese bank!

OK, here's some background for Cedarwhatever...not that s/he'd let a fact get in the way of a good meme.

1. About 15 years ago the military started the "Total Force" program..the name's been changed a few times. In the old days the reserves and NG survived on the cast offs from the regular services. The problems with this was noticed during Gulf War V1.0 when reserve units showed up with outdated gear and training. The Total Force concept was to equip and train reserve units as the follow-on forces. So the recent practice of deploying reserve units for 6-12 months isn't because our regular forces are stretched to the limit...its because (pay attention Cedar)...THAT. IS. THE. WAY. THE. WAR. PLANS. ARE. NOW. MADE. This is by DESIGN!

2. In regards to the idea of an "overstretched" military and reference to shipbuilding and planes, the biggest cuts to the military were made during the BRACs in the 90's after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I believe the term was "Peace Dividend." Guess which party was screaming the loudest to reinvest all those wasted military bucks back to social programs. Remember Algore's vaunted "Reinventing Government" initiative? He touted all these government positions that were eliminated...but failed to point out that many of those numbers reflected cuts in troop strength.

Now, if fools such as Cedar REALLY think that we should all be sacrificing, there's nothing that says they can't take their tax-cut and cut a check to a local service organization. If they are REALLY concerned about how the cost of war is stretching the budget, then write your congressman and demand that they cut out all pork from spending bills (do we really need to fund an aromatherapy program for low income housing in Detroit?).

Finally, as a retired Marine, I want to ask all those like Cedar to do one thing if they honestly support the military. SHUT. THE. F*CK. UP! Your platitudes of "We support the troops but not the war." are just so much BS and don't think even the greenest private doesn't know that. The only people you are fooling are the yellow dog lemmings that blindly vote for whomever is running as long as there's a (D) after their name. By finding every little fault with every action taken in the war, from strategic decisions to tactical deployments, you don't support the troops...you give comfort and aid to the enemy (who's not really much brighter than those yellow dogs). They see your nit-picking as one more reason to hold on. They see your bemoaning of every set back as a sign that if they can only hold on one more day, kill one more soldier, that eventually they will break our will.

Contrary to what Toady Kennedy says, Iraq is NOTHING like Vietnam except for one very important point: If we lose, it won't be on the battlefield...it will be on the homefront.

FormerHostage -

By finding every little fault with every action taken in the war, from strategic decisions to tactical deployments, you don't support the troops...you give comfort and aid to the enemy

Critics of the US Military are (blissfully) unaware of the Marine Leadership Trait of 'decisivness' which states that a hasty decision based upon imperfect intelligence is often better than a late decision with all the information in hand.

These armchair generals have never been in combat, don't understand the value of an imperfect decision, and can only focus on the negative.

If a particular action is 70% right and 30% wrong which part should be the focus of attention?

Ace, Hob, the book you need to read is "Men Against Fire, The problem of Battle Command." And no, Marshall was not "debunked". The changes in training doctrine that were set in motion by him and others in the '40s and '50s brought about a shift in the dynamics of our military. The advent of the all volunteer force has further changed the ratio of aggressive action and application of fire. Read the man's work, there is quite a bit of it, also, check out Crimson Prairie, a well researched book about the Plains Indian Campaigns.