THE Debate '08

So, I had to work at my radio station last night. This caused me to miss the debate last night. So I'm spending all this morning getting caught up; reading the analysisesses, watching the videos and trying to draw may own conclusions.

The only problem is I'm stuck on the part where Barry states that he wants to send X number of Combat Brigades into Afghanistan.

I have a problem with this statement:

Barry never served in the Army (but neither did Johnny, he was a Navy pilot), so how the hell is he going to presume he knows the manning requirements it will need to address the issue? And if he's going to make a statement like this, WHICH brigades would he send? Infantry? Armor? Armored Cavalry? Artillery? Engineer? Civil Affairs? Psychological Operations? Maybe a brigade from the AG Corps?

If you take the time to follow each link, you'll notice that each branch has a different ability, or specialty. You wouldn't ask your plumber to cook you dinner, why would you expect an Armor Brigade to go fight a Special Operations war?

Afghanistan is MUCH more difficult than Iraq for a number of reasons, least of which is our overt covert actions from the late 1970's through the collapse of the Soviet Union. Not to mention these people have been in almost nonstop conflict for thousands of years. If you think you can waltz in there and completely change their way of doing things, even in a ten year time span, you're frigging crazy.

Remember Bosnia?

Didn't it take something like 15 years?

Aren't we just recently handing over the last of our bases?

And aren't they still struggling to get their crap together?

But I digress.....

These types of decisions and wars need to be made by the men and women WHO HAVE DEDICATED THEIR LIVES AND CAREERS TO THIS!

The reason people are of the opinion that we are "loosing" the War on Terror is because we have elected officials who insist on being armchair generals.

An adept saying that I've found very useful in my career in the Army is, "STAY IN YOUR LANE."

These means that you should NOT pretend you are a Subject Matter Expert (or S.M.E. ("SMEE")). Stick with what you know and let the people whose job it is to LEAD THE TROOPS lead the damn troops.

I'm sick and frickin' tired of fat old men and women (I'm an equal opportunity hater right now) wanting to play Charlie frickin' Wilson's War and micro-manage a war that needs to be fought by professional war-fighters.

LET US WIN.

Don't tell us how to win the war, tell us just to win, let us surprise you with our ingenuity.

Thus endith the sermon.

JB2D out.
"If pro is opposite of con, then what is the opposite of progress?"

I FINALLY HAVE A JOB!

So, after my truck accident back in May, I've been out of a job. It sucked.

Then I went to a Veteran's Job Fair in Appleton.

Best move I've made since I enlisted.

See, I've been wanting to get a job a a Correctional Officer around where I live for a long time. Problem is, they have a minimum education requirement (which makes sense to me) but THEY NEVER PUT THAT IN THE JOB LISTING, THEY DON'T TELL YOU WHEN YOU INTERVIEW AND ONLY LET YOU KNOW WHEN THEY DECIDE TO GRACE YOU WITH A REJECTION LETTER! See, 9-11 happened during my first semester of college, I got mobilized in Feb '02 and haven't made it back to college. It's kind of tough to get an Associates Degree or even 60 college credits to meet the Wisconsin Dept of Corrections education requirements.

Never mind that I had served 9 months in a war zone (OIF 3? Anybody?) as part of a 5 man Special Operations team, earned a Combat Action Badge after being attacked at the intersection of Routes Predators & Senators, lived on the East side of Sadr City, was rocketed, mortared, shot at, bombed, pelted with rocks, hit in the face with half a cinder block and was lucky enough to get dysentery TWICE!

But I guess that just won't cut it, cause I'd have to be more qualified to babysit a bunch of degenerates who don't have the common sense or a properly working moral compass to keep their stupid asses out of jails.

So, all my experience aside, apparently the state of Wisconsin doesn't think I'm qualified. But the good folks within the Dept. of Homeland Security think I've got the right stuff.

IN YOUR CHEESY FACE WISCONSIN!

Future Border Patrol Agent JB2D out!

My 9-11

I almost didn't post today, for a number of reasons. Seven years and I'm just now able to wrap my head around the enormity of the attacks and the events that followed.

I sort of don't want to tell my 9-11 story as there is really nothing special or eventful about it.

I feel small and extremely insignificant when I think of the victims, the choices they were forced to make and the lives that were indescribably altered within less than 30 minutes.

So please do not take offense at my tale, please do not think I mean anything than the utmost respect for those who suffered in NYC, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.

Here goes:

I lived in LaCrosse, WI at the time. My friends and I all had Tuesday's off, so Monday nights we would get together, drink beer and jam. Drunken Mondays were a blast.

I went to bed that Monday night (or maybe early Tuesday morning, I can't remember for obvious reasons) in my tiny little efficiency/broom closet of an apartment. Living alone had it's privileges. I didn't have to worry about anyone seeing my sad little futon.

I remember walking to the other side of the apartment complex and trying to force my keys into the peephole.

The next thing I know, my cell phone begins ringing.

Eyes open, light cutting through my eyes making me regret the 18 beers that found their way into my stomach and were fighting to get to the front of the line to leave the same way they came in.

Oh, yeah, my phone's ringing.

Hi Mom.

The TV?

Huh? What channel?

What do you mean it doesn't matter?

I quit my job that day and waited for my mob orders, sitting on my sad little raft of a futon quietly crying to myself.

Completely unable to begin comprehending the magnitude of what I just saw unfold on my TV.

Live.

Unedited and without commercial interruption, I watched a woman jump from God knows how far up to escape the fire.

Phone disconnected and so did my mind.

Face goes numb.

This shit's only supposed to happen in the movies, not real life. did I accidentally turn to HBO? Was this another Jerry Bruckheimer movie?

No. God how I wish it was just a movie.

I didn't loose anyone, I didn't know anyone, it didn't directly impact me at that moment but I could just not stop the stinging tears from rolling down my cheeks.

Seven years later, one marriage, two kids, a deployment in the War on Terror, two mobilizations, countless thousands of miles traveled.

The tears still burn and I can't make them stop.

And I feel guilty somehow. I didn't suffer, what right do I have to cry?

I constantly put these thoughts out of my head as there is still a job to do.

Seven years later, the job is still not finished, they still want to bring back to our door, and we will keep them out despite the burning tears.

Never forget, never forgive, never again.

May God bless you all and keep you safe.....

JB2D out.

Checking in..... things are changing...... like my socks.

So, I've been laying low for a while now. I've been getting over the whole truck wreck thing, ended up going to Hohenfels, Germany, came back, lost my job, but the real important thing is this: I bought a book.



"What's so special about that", you might say?



Well, despite all the crap I've got going for me right now, this book has changed my attitude towards just about everything.



"WOW! JB2D, what kind of book was it?"



It was a book about a man's experience in Operation Iraqi Freedom. It's titled, Chasing Ghosts: A Soldier's Fight for America from Baghdad to Washington, by Paul Rieckhoff.



Now let me explain why this book has changed my opinions and what it has led me to.



When I deployed to Iraq in the summer of 2004, I was a part of Civil Affairs. Civil Affairs is a branch of Special Operations within the US Army, along side of Psychological Operations. USACAPOC is our acronym.



I may as well have been on another planet, my experience was so different from Mr. Rieckhoff's.



CA (Civil Affairs) is almost totally comprised of Army Reserve units. This means that we get federal funding. This also means that because we are a part of USASOC (US Army Special Operations), we get almost everything we need and then some.



Mr. Rieckhoff was from the New York National Guard and was cross leveled (lent out to another unit to meet the manning requirements to deploy) to the Florida National Guard.



NG (Natl' Guard) is state funded. They depend on a smaller budget and are expected to keep pace with the Active Army, which, that's right! THEY get federal funding!



So Mr. Rieckhoff was fighting an uphill battle before he ever even left the States!



I could go on and on, but you'll just have to pick this book up for yourself.



So this book detailed his time in Iraq and his initiative to change things upon returning to America.



He details how he attempted to offer his insights and knowledge to Senator John Kerry (who seemed interested, but lacked the balls to shake things up politically) and was plain shot down by president Bush.



This really opened my eyes to a number of facts:



1. This war does, indeed, seem to be wrong. Let me clarify. I originally bought into the whole WMD thing, that theory was questioned as part of my AO (Area of operation) included a section of Baghdad that was home to the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Center. You can find more info here. You can see from this evidence that at one time, there was an effort by Saddam to manufacture WMDs. I have walked ALL of the Tuwaitha Nuclear Facility. Obviously there is nothing there now, but I would seriously doubt that this place was capable of producing anything much less a credible WMD. It had been bombed by the Israeli's back in 1979/80 and has been a dump ever since.



A BBC article I found states that the locals had looted the place and, "the looters were not after the uranium itself, which they tipped onto the ground so they could take away the containers to store food and water". The story continues with, "Workers living on the site, worried about being contaminated themselves, buried the spilled uranium in cement and made a desperate appeal to visiting journalists for international help."



I never saw anything to verify the locals claim that they buried the "uranium" in cement. I also spent a good deal of time at Tuwaitha as it was fenced in and provided me and my team a small level of security. We even took our body armor off and would have lunch up there! It's where we staged ourselves as a sort of CA QRF (Quick Reactionary Force) for the 1st free elections in January of 2005. We stayed there overnight. Nothing was glowing. So I seriously doubt the validity of that WMD story.



2. LT Rieckhoff experienced a bureaucratic nightmare in regards to the ROE (Rules of Engagement) and even their jobs! While they (ROE) DID change almost daily, if not hourly, there still should have some common sense when it came to INFANTRY operations.



Let me break that one down to the Barney level for you:



Infantry: THEY KILL SHIT!



Tracking?



"Like a TOW missile JB!"



Good. Now, when you can SEE the name brand of the bad guy's cigarette WHILE he's shooting at you, you should not need to ask permission from some limp-dick fobbit BC if you can go make it stop.

Now that I'm off my soap box.....

This book opened my eyes in a way that nothing, NOTHING has before. And I was there! That's just how incredibly complex and mind boggling important this conflict is.

It has also, most importantly, opened my eyes politically.

I've begun researching for myself, not letting any media outlet spoon feed me their propaganda. I also have begun reading the all important blogs, as they not only ask important questions (sometimes!) but they give me insight into how others are interpreting the same thing I'm seeing. Maybe they caught something that got by me.

Either way, this book has changed me.

It's taken me three days to put this post together as I've been studying up on the Democrat National Convention and I've been watching the Republican National Convention, and as I type this, I'm listening/watching John McCain give his speech.

I've read that some people on the internet claim his speeches are "a little stiff/rigid"..... that's because the North Vietnamese beat the shit out of him!

John McCain knows what sacrifice is, does Barry?

John McCain has SERVED his country, what has Barry done for you?

But don't take my word for it, after all, I'm another one of those voices that I'm so skeptical of. Why don't you look into the candidates, educate yourself and make an informed decision this fall.

But whatever you do, make the decision to vote. This is going to directly impact your life for the next 4-8 years.

On THAT, you can take my word.

JB2D out!