Garand

Newsletter January 2008 #71

Table of Contents:
[Newsletter January 2008]
[Preparing for the Worst]
[The Human Rights Commission Jihad]
[The State of the Navy]
[Alexander Mackenzie's Bookshelf]
[Voices of Freedom]
Preparing for the Worst

Are we really prepared for the most outrageous attacks that Jihadists terrorists can offer?

The old principle of ‘train-hard, fight-easy' has long been understood. The WWII Wehrmacht aphorism “sweat saves blood� would have been familiar to Flavius Josephus whose 1st Century AD history observed that the Legions of Rome made their “exercises unbloody battles, and their battles bloody exercises�. Some of the last Korean War combat vets in the Canadian Forces growled similar advice in the author's ears as a young officer on training courses: “Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance … sir.� The lesson is endlessly repeated in most books of military history, because it has to be. We keep forgetting.

While intellectual laziness is common in our species, human beings often forget what they don't understand. Frequently, we don't understand because we simply find a particular thought too horrible to contemplate or linger over. This is one of the reasons why we keep being surprised; especially by terrorist attacks.

An Israeli friend whose brother was killed by terrorists, and who had been at the site of a suicide bombing, once gave a reminder of the fundamental truth of terrorism. He described seeing scraps of human flesh embedded in concrete in the aftermath of the detonation of a Shaheed's bomb vest and used this to illustrate a point: The purpose of terror is terror. When the terrorist is at his most unholy, he seeks to instill inconceivable shock and horror by using the obscenity of his violence on a target that is chosen not merely for its intrinsic worth, but to perform an act of blasphemous sacrilege. Human flesh is not supposed to be embedded in concrete, nor are we supposed to be killed when sipping coffee and reading our newspapers at some sidewalk bistro on a bright sunny morning.

Belsan

In the annals of terrorism, it is hard to think of a more vile attack than that undertaken by a team of Chechen terrorists on September 1st, 2004 in Beslan, a small town in North Ossetia within the Russian Federation. We were all shocked by the attack, but the lessons that were learned from the incident don't seem to have been drilled home in North American and Western Europe. They should be.

The attack occurred on the very first day of school, when in Russian tradition; children arriving in the junior grade bring flowers for those beginning their last year and in turn are escorted by the senior students to their first classes. Many parents were in attendance, as were some 900 students and at least 60 teachers and staff. At 9:30 in the morning, some 32 heavily armed Chechen terrorists began their attack – some having previously stashed weapons in the school itself before unleashing their assault. They quickly took 1,300 hostages.

Typically, the terrorists confiscated all the phones, promising that anyone who was found concealing one would be shot along with three other hostages. They also killed between 15 and 22 adult males among the hostages who looked like they might be capable of planning resistance or exercising some sort of leadership (one was calmly translating the terrorists demands into Ossetian for those who didn't speak Russian).

Not all of the attackers (28 men and 4 women) were Chechens. Three were converts and two were British citizens from Algeria and habitu�s of the infamous Finsbury Mosque in London. The Russians insist some of the planning and financing for the attack came from Arab/al Qaeda sources. They shared their intelligence on this, and the evidence stands up.

There is some confusion over the ‘motives' for the attack (terrorists can always manufacture an excuse for their violence), but one thing is clear. The only statement of a negotiating position by the attackers was for the total withdrawal of all Russian forces from Chechnya. While there were some discussions with Russian hostage negotiators about minor tactical issues such as offering food and water in return for the release of some hostages or permission to move bodies from the front of the school, these mostly went nowhere: Probably because the terrorists didn't really want to talk. The one significant exception was that the President of nearby Ingushetia was allowed to enter the school on the second day of the siege and leave with a few mothers who had infants of breast-feeding age.

It is clear that the terrorists were busy right from the beginning of the incident in preparing for a murderous stand-off. They constructed fire positions on the roof of the building, undertook a limited reconnaissance outside the building (possibly with an eye to escape routes for some of the team, as fourteen of the 32 were not rigged with suicide devices); and placed bombs throughout the structure. These last were designed to murder as many of their hostages as possible should a rescue or escape attempt manifest itself, but also to defend the structure against an assault by encircling Russian security forces.

There is some debate over the terrorists' conduct towards their older teenaged female hostages. Some survivors of the incident testified that several girls were gang-raped --an act that is fully consistent with Jihadist tradition and practice -- but all of the children confined in an overcrowded gymnasium had stripped down to their underwear in an effort to cope with stifling heat, which lent confusion to the charges of sexual assault. However, in the Wahhabi/Deobandi interpretations of Islam that Jihadis follow, the onset of puberty is seen as the beginning of adult life… a 14 year old boy who elects to join the Jihad and fight is making an adult decision; a captive girl of the same age is a ‘prize' of her captors and may be raped ‘legitimately' according to some of the Fatwas that the Jihadists prefer to accept. One doubts that in a three day stand-off which the terrorists were largely sure would end in a bloody combat that they were likely to restrain themselves from sexual assault on minors, given that they didn't recognize this as a crime and were contemplating murdering them all anyway.

If Jihadists ever mount a similar operation against young teenaged schoolchildren in North America or Western Europe, we can be sure about what will happen to 13 year old girls who catch their eyes. The concern is not an idle one, as there have been numerous indicators in the US of a hostile interest in school buses and junior high schools (where the students tend to be between 11 and 15 years of age). The idea of an attack on such children has been bruited about by al Qaeda for some years. Osama bin Laden himself has opined that Jihadists are entitled to take the lives of 2 million American children. Moreover, an attack as evil as that in Beslan is sure to be eventually emulated.

There are other lessons from Beslan to consider. First; every spare minute that the Beslan terrorists could use was spent preparing their defences and rigging devices to murder their hostages. All of our tactics for hostage negotiations presume that time is on our side; it isn't. Soldiers recognize that giving an enemy time to ready his defences is an error. Police simply don't think this way because they always hope to talk a barricaded gunman into surrendering. Emergency response team leaders should start learning about military style quick attacks and encounter battles, where you try to immediately develop the situation even as you are learning about it. Yes, these are messy situations and can easily go wrong, but there are times where a quick attack is the best response.

Admittedly, encounter-style tactics are now the recommended best solution for police when there is a gunman running amok in a school or shopping mall. Yet even higher standards of tactical proficiency would be necessary in a Beslan-style incident, and would still bring no guarantee of success except that it might allow more potential hostages to escape.

Secondly, part of the problem on the third and final day of the Beslan atrocity was the confusion that attended the security force assault on the school. Even after more than three years it still isn't truly clear how the assault began and how the shooting started, but the best accounts suggest that a half-planned storming began after the main charge in the gymnasium detonated – whether accidentally or deliberately remains unknown.

While one can presume that the Russians didn't have their most disciplined and capable security troops in the area of Beslan; one doubts that even their best (who are as good as any) would have behaved much differently. Police and soldiers alike, at their core, are ‘sheepdogs', whose instinct is to protect ‘sheep' from ‘wolves'. Moreover, the ultimate evolutionary basis of all human society is the protection of children; so naturally, the instinct of the Russian security forces was – as it would rightly be for anyone else – to act as quickly as they could once they perceived the murder of the children had begun.

In the case of Beslan, their preparations were not thorough, and the troops were not as expert as they might be elsewhere. One cannot blame them for acting as they did… but should remember that if a similar incident occurred in Manitoba or Mississippi, for example, local police might simply not wait for the best assets of regional or federal police or for military Special Forces to show up. They also might not have the choice. This is the second lesson: Every police tactical unit needs training for a Beslan-type scenario.

The other pressure, besides the compelling threat to an entire community's children, on the security troops in Beslan were the parents of those children. Normally, when encountering a hostage situation, police cordon off the site to secure it from supporters of the hostage-takers, eager reporters, spectators, and the friends and families of the hostages. In Beslan, with over 1,300 hostages in the school (including 900 children), isolating the site was barely possible. Moreover, when shooting erupted, many civilians dashed forward with security troops into the gunfire of the Chechens – and who can blame them? What true human being wouldn't do the same thing if confronted with a similar situation?

As an aside, remembering the footage from Beslan and reviewing much of it again, it was easy to be moved by the naked bravery of so many ordinary people rushing into an ongoing gunfight to rescue children. In the same way, the memories of the 911 attack now tend to revolve around the valiant sacrifice that so many rescuers (first responders and civilians alike) made, as well as by the passengers of Flight 93 who roused themselves and counter-attacked their hijackers. The purpose of terror might be terror, but courage can always nullify the purposes of the terrorists and invariably leaves a finer legacy.

There are some issues to resolve here; the normal instinct of first responders is to shoo away all ‘civilians' (by which they mean everyone who is not a police officer, paramedic or fire-fighter) from a hostage incident. The onrush of parents and other citizens of Beslan certainly made the storming of the school a wild and chaotic affair; or more properly, a wilder and more chaotic affray that it might have otherwise been. Yet the ‘scorecard' of the results of the storming of the school speaks for itself.
The official death toll stands (three years later) thusly:
Hostages: 334 out of some 1300.
Police, emergency workers and local civilians: 8.
Security Forces: 11
Terrorists: 31 out of 32, with one being captured.

Hundreds of hostages also had to be hospitalized, mostly due to the effects of the terrorist bombs placed among them and gun shot wounds. From the point of view of ending a hostage taking through an assault, this was a successful result. It should also be pointed out that the rush of civilians played a critical – if unorganized – role in evacuating hostages while under fire; in supporting the firefighting; and probably did much to prevent the escape of the terrorists.

The lesson here is that if (or rather, when) a Beslan-type of incident occurs; emergency responders should expect massive pressure from civilians with a desperate desire to help. It might be a good idea to plan to harness this in a number of constructive ways… for logistic and communication support, perhaps helping to establish an outer cordon, pooling an extra reserve of vehicles for casualty evacuation, etcetera. They will get involved anyway, and wise incident commanders might as well plan to make good use of them.

In Beslan, many local civilians turned up armed. This would certainly happen in much of the United States and not a few parts of Canada too. In a similar incident, police and emergency responders would already have enough on their plate without having to confront this group as well, so it would be therefore wise to consider ways of co-opting them instead. Given how fast some police armories and ammunition inventories have been drained in the past during several notable confrontations with well-armed and well-prepared criminals; the loan of a community's scoped big-game rifles, deer guns and more shotguns could be most welcome.

Another part of the uproar over Beslan comes from the usual Russian habit of botched communications with the public. Official versions of details of the incident were adhered to long after it was clear that they were utterly incorrect, and the Russian addiction to unnecessary secrecy wrought its usual chaos on proceedings. As always, North American incident commanders would do well to communicate as clearly as they can both during and after the incident.

There is another vital point to consider, or perhaps rather a point to make about the vitals of terrorists. Increasingly, Coalition troops involved in house clearing combat against Jihadis in Iraq have often noticed that their opponents are much tougher than usual – largely because they had been injecting themselves with powerful stimulants like Atropine as soon as they start shooting. Medical examiners of the Chechen corpses from Beslan also noticed that their subjects had an unusual number of drugs in their systems including powerful stimulants and painkillers.

Small arms bullets seldom kill immediately, but the target is often ‘incapacitated' within 30 seconds. People who have been shot often recount an impact like being hit by a sledgehammer and then stumbling on for some time. The pain usually comes much later. Somebody on powerful stimulants and pain killers might receive a fatal gunshot, or even several of them, but under the influence of the drugs can often ignore their wounds for several minutes. This is plenty of time to keep shooting and set off a few bombs. The only way to stop him is not so much to kill him with a few more shots, but to demolish him by literally shooting him to bits.
Lessons in Iraq

Additionally, from military experiences in Iraq, police who burst in on prepared Jihadis in a potential Beslan-type incident had better be prepared for:

Bullet-resistant barricades constructed as mini-fortresses within the interior of buildings they are trying to clear. Contrary to the usual practice of defending the exterior of a building, the Jihadis would want police to enter.

If there are many Jihadis present, these mini-fortresses might support each other, or ambushers could be waiting to emerge when an assault on a mini-fort begins.

Incredible firepower at pointblank ranges. Targets might be firing fully automatic rifles with 100 round magazines at ranges of 5 metres or less.

Opponents who simply won't drop just because they've received a couple of hollow-point bullets in the torso, and who will continue to shoot as described above even when mortally wounded.

Jihadis in urban settings in Iraq have also surrounded themselves with propane canisters and fuel-cans, in the hope of igniting a fireball as their last act.

Targets that are also wearing night vision goggles and who may be almost as at home in the dark as their attackers are. Flash-bang grenades might not disorient them either.

American troops in Iraq and Russian security forces have found that they need new and much tougher standards in close-quarters fighting inside buildings. Police special task units in the US and Canada should also train to meet those new standards because those new standards are coming to meet them, and this may well happen someday soon in a crowded school full of desperately wounded children. Train hard, train very hard…

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca


http://mackenzieinstitute.com/2008/worst-010108.htm

Magnum88C

Actually, according to the Weaponology episodes on a few days ago, it was Spetznaz that did the assault. They said that the terrorists were well prepared with mines, machineguns, etc. They said the 3 Spetznaz commanders were killed int he first few minutes, and several more cut down.

I don't care how elite the assault force is, if a place is defended by people who know what they are doing, they are going to take casualties.

IMO if this happens in the US, it will end just as tragically, but, IMO the following night, every mosque in the US should be burnt to the ground.

cutter

I agree with Magnum on the casualties and on the retaliation. In MY opinion, what would actually happen is that total disarmament of the Citizenry would be among the first actions of our Government. After all, we wouldn't want to offend the poor muslims with notions so archaic as resistance or revenge. The result would be ugly...really ugly.

Rich Z

The mistake we made was after 911, not identifying every living soul even remotely thought to be responsible, then tracking down EVERYONE even slightly related to them, and killing them all in such a way that it would desecrate the corpses.

It's not enough to threaten the terrorist soldiers with death in retaliation. They don't care. They EXPECT to die. They need to face the prospect of every genetic trace of them on this earth being eradicated permanently because of their actions.

THEY need to know terror from the receiving end.........

If we are engaged in this type of war, WE can't be like the redcoats against the colonists, playing by the rules and they NOT doing the same. We KNOW how that turned out.

Magnum88C

Well, I don't like to quote hollyweirdos, but John Travolta's character in Swordfish had the right idea:
We have to make the retaliation for attacks on us so horrible, that the perpetrators would be too afraid to do so again for a very long time.

Example would be ol' Blackjack Pershing's killing of Islamic terrorists and burying their bodies with pig entrails. Ended Islamic terrorism in the Philipines for 70+ years. in fact, it didn't really start up again until those horrible Americans left.

cutter

The question we have to ask ourselves is if we are prepared to fight as monsters in a monsterous war? Until we are, this if a fight we are going to continue to lose.

Rshooter

I will not go over some of the training that I received in the military when I was being trained to fight wars for my country. I was also trained in the articles of war. At times the two were mutually exclusive. If we train our military to fight some of the animals on their terms we would not recognize our men when they come home. Pandora's box should never be opened for a reason. Teach a man to kill for his country within the laws of war and he can come home. Teach a man to rape, pillage, and plunder and you create a monster. Yes, those pious warriors of Allah can rape in his name. I am sure that somewhere they are training someone to kill without remorse but that person will never be invited to my house.

Rich Z

I've often wondered if video games were a sort of pre-psych to get kids used to the idea of killing. After playing some for a while, it does sort of numb you to the idea of pulling a trigger on a bad guy. Most first person shooter type games will have you shooting first and looking at what you shot second, in record time.

I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again: NOTHING scares me more than the thought of weaponized biologicals in the hands of fanatics. Someone fully in the grips of religious fanaticism would think no more of unleashing a true doomsday weapon and killing off the entire world than they would of strapping a bomb to their body and driving into a building. It would be all the same to them.

Someone coming in through LaGuardia then jumping through Atlanta and then Dallas into Los Angeles infected with a weaponized biological that is still asymptomatic yet highly contagious could start a true TEOLAWKI single handedly.

lucille

Some years ago, pictures were sent to us school nurses to help us try to see the difference between chicken pox lesions, and smallpox lesions. We also had some info on other sorts of biologicals. This was an effort towards early detection.
I don't know that early detection would do much. It is indeed scary.

RIKA

For most adults over 30, their smallpox immunization protection ran out years ago. Being able to identify what is going to kill you is cold comfort IMO. BTW, nobody wants to admit that it is the illegal aliens who are bringing smallpox, new strains of tuberculosis and other communicable diseases into the country.

RIKA

cutter

Rshooter, I'll give you that. Now how about all of this Geneva Convention crap about not using certain types of bullets because they are too deadly and taking prisoners? I thought the purpose of going to war was to render the enemy unable to wage that war.

Rshooter

If you wound a man it takes two men to carry him off the field and then it takes a whole cadre of medical services to care for him. Also, everyone wants to believe he is going to come home, even if he is shot, ie the million dollar wound.

As far as prisoners, the Japanese made the mistake of slaughtering some Raiders that surrendered in Guadalcanal in the beginning of WWII. Their bodies were found by Marines and the thought of "total war" was sealed. No prisoners, no surrender, no quarter. Fighting to the last man can get bloody expensive when you know the battle is lost but you have to go around digging out holdouts like rats. Not that the Japanese were much in the mood to surrender but the Marines were not much in the mood to take prisoners either.

Magnum88C

Unfortunately that's a bull**** reason made up after the fact. The only one that is true for is western armies. The people we've fought, from WWII onward have been the "strip the wounded of his gear, leave him to the crows and drive on" types.

It's also BS with the whole "train the man to fight a monstrous war and he can't come home". Plenty of our WWII vets came home. They did plenty of the good ol' overrun the enemy, burn his village down and take his stuff". Some of them even did the rape thing (which I don't agree with), but the point being, most of them came back and reintegrated into society just fine.

What screws a guy up is having to fight a war by rules no one else follows then being spat upon because he lost an unwinnable situation, by the very people who made it unwinnable.

Gunners762

LINK:Unit 731 Experimental Camp

Rshooter

Magnum88C

You may like to believe it is BS but even the Japanese and VC had hospitals for their wounded. They may have a much lower regard for people who surrender or the other guys wounded but they still treat their own wounded in most cases. The fact that any POW's came back from WWII, Korea, and Vietnam means that it is not total BS.

As far as the monstrous war thing I am not talking about overrunning him, burning his village and taking his stuff. A terrorist's aim is to inflict terror, complete and total fear and dread. You and I both know that more than one of us American's through-out history in war time has now and again figured out how to cross over into the war-crimes side of the line.

As far as the spitting thing, hell, half the people doing the spitting are the biggest supporters of this one and the last one. I could not believe it when flower children were cheering when a legless Disabled Veteran's car was towed from a parking lot in Monterey CA during the first Gulf War because he had an anti war sticker on the bumper.

cutter

Well, as far as I can see, our kissing of the UN's butt and bowing to their cutsey little rules of war have not ended islamic terrorism nor has it won this absurd war on terror. This "war" is roughly the equivelent of a time out for a toddler. If we want to end terrorism, we must raise the cost of comitting it. For every victim of muslim terrorism, regardless of nationality, one thousand muslims should die. Call it genocide, religious intolerance, a hate crime, call it whatever you want. In truth, this would simply be charging more than the terrorist would be willing to pay. If 1000:1 isn't expensive enough, then perhaps 5000:1 would be in order. One way or another, the terror would end. I for one am tired of folks dying simply because they are not muslim. And people say Freemasons are trying to take over the world...sheesh!

Rich Z

If illegal aliens are bringing in smallpox, I think the CDC would be all over this news. Supposedly smallpox was eradicated except for those remaining stocks in freezers.

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/disease/faq.asp

RIKA

While everybody thinks that the CDC is a govt. entity it is in fact privately owned. However since it receives most of its funding from the govt it will promote the fedgov's agenda as ordered. Are you aware of the leprosy outbreak in Springdale Arkansas? Last I heard there were 78 cases; in a town that small that constitutes an epidemic. The CDC has made no announcement that I am aware of. I learned of this from a couple of small leaks on the radio. Seems that the fedgov let a bunch of somalis (I think) into the country without health screening them and settled them in Arkansas. Leprosy, tuberculosis, smallpox - IMO the govt isn't going to publicize health threats for fear of scaring the sheeple.

Look at this quote from above:

"At the moment, the smallpox vaccine is not available for members of the general public. In the event of a smallpox outbreak, however, there is enough smallpox vaccine to vaccinate everyone every person in the United States.(modified December 29, 2004)"

The two sentences in the quote seem totally contradictory to me. Either there is enough vaccine or there isn't. If there isn't enough vaccine then it will take a lot of time to create it. During that time lapse a lot of people will die; maybe you and me or some of our loved ones. Again, IMO whatever vaccine there is will be used to immunize politicians, bureaucrats and govt workers.

RIKA

SurviveNthrive

The CDC staff get government pay checks.

RIKA

Are they govt employees assigned to CDC? As I understand it the CDC is not a govt entity.

*** edit: I looked it up on Wikipedia and it appears that I am mistaken. I left my previous posts to show I was wrong. Please ignore my ignorance.

Apologies ***

RIKA

Rich Z

Interesting about the leprosy outbreak. From what I understand, armadillos can be a reservoir for this disease.

From what I recall, bubonic plague can still be picked up in the southwest from ground squirrels if you have the misfortune to have fleas jump from them to you.... Once it develops into pneumonic plague, every cough you make sends potential death to others into the air.

I believe when West Nile Fever showed up in the USA, a LOT of people had hair standing up on the back of their neck.

Nature, you GOTTA love it.......

Rshooter

Been hitting the Viagra too hard and we got the picture to prove it.

Rshooter

Now I know why Texans run the little critters over, I thought it was because like in Tennessee roadkill is legal to take home and eat. You are correct about the squirrels and plague, darn tree rodents. It is birds that carry West Nile Fever, not sure of any specific species, just know it is birds and kids are supposed to stay away from dead birds down south.

cutter

RIKA, if you are only wrong once a day, count your blessings. You are a sight better than I am.

IIRC, West Nile is a funny little virus in that if you catch it and survive, you will have developed an immunity and cannot catch it again...unless it eventually mutates.

Garand

Cutter, you should probably look up the "Laws of War" also. The first laws came from the Hague Convention in 1899 & 1907, The Geneva Conventions went back to 1863, the UN charter only came about in 1945. And come to think of it the US was one of the leaders in its formation. Probably because of the genocide that the Germans took against the Jews in the concentration camps, much like the Americans ran in France and Germany when hundreds of thousands of German POWs died as a result of starvation and exposure during the winters of 1945,46, & 47. Everyone commits war crimes, even Canadians soldiers did in the fall of France, when 1 regiment had a real problem capturing German soldiers, after it became an unwritten rule to "take no prisoners" after a German massacre of Canadian soldiers. Those that don't pay attention to history are doomed to repeat it, as I believe the saying goes.


By the way I have 2 friends that have contracted West Nile, 1 was totally wiped out for over 8 months and recovered, the other still has problems with movement, 5 years after the fact.

SurviveNthrive

Canadians were present in World War I???

JUST KIDDING!!!!!

OK, the Law of Land Warfare was written by kill joys...

1. You can't use White Phosphorous on troops in the open.

What the heck not? Can you imagine how utterly cool that would be? Sure hate to be them.

2. You can't shoot pilots or paratroopers coming down in parachutes...

Why the heck not? I didn't ask for them to join us, and if they're coming down in your area, ain't they trespassing?

3. You can't use calibers in excess of .50 on individual troops directly...

Hey, but you can use your Vulcan or Chain gun on equipment and weapons, like web gear and AK's!

4. You can't use buck shot on conventional forces. You can use it on irregulars...

Did they ask to see ID's in Vietnam?

Garand

World War 1, wasn't that when you guys showed up for the last 6 months or something like that??

RIKA

When Viagra was new, one of the talk shows just had to review it on the air. There were two men and one woman (the traffic goddess) who took it. The two men described how it affected them in as much intimate detail as they could without getting licked off the air. The woman reported that it just made her "hot and moist down there". Guess it doesn't affect the female much.

Now my little gutterbuddy squirrel looks like he has done every girl squirrel on the block. Even though he is completely pooped he has crawled back for more "go pill". Squirrels are sex fiends ya know!

RIKA

Magnum88C

Yeah, that was back in the good ol' days when Americans, especially those of the wealthy high classes, including sons of senators and such, ran away to Canada to JOIN the war.

We were taught int he Army that it was .50 cal and up, and that if questioned after gunning someone down, you say you were shooting at a piece of military equipment, not the man, and he just happened to catch some of it.
And yes, it was the running joke "I was shooting at his magazines, I didn't mean to hit him!"

Rshooter

Once when loading for a mount out to "secure an embassy" we were loading munitions. You could not believe how careless everyone was until the WP showed up......

Sad but true. Had a friend on a track that shot a little kid with a .50. The kid was old enough to toss a grenade in the jeep that was in front of the track and toast the guys in the jeep.

I apologize, in the heat of the moment I forgot whether it was slug, slug, buckshot or slug, buckshot, buckshot.

Garand

Magnum, you are correct but keep in mind that even more Canadians went south to fight in Vietnam. About 55,000 last estimate that I read.

Rich Z

Speaking of white phosphorus, I thought this was an especially intriguing photo....


USS Alabama hit by a white phosphorus incendiary in September 1921

Rich Z

I believe that a LOT more folks got WNV and were no more symptomatic than if they had contracted the flu or a cold. If this had been a seriously virulent pathogen, it would have been pretty devastating. Carried by birds, it would have spread literally like wild fire, decimating our society.

You do have to wonder if this was a test.........

Magnum88C

It wasn't meant as a US vs Canada comparison, it was a America then vs America now comparison. There was a time when our wealthy and privelaged went to war even if they had to sign up with another country to do it, rather than now, when they whimper and hide behind daddy's skirt.

Unalist

This thread was good to read even though it was brough up by spam. The original post reminded me why I leave my loved one to fight in the land of my enemies instead of fighting my enemies in the land of my loved ones.

money30

The old principle of ‘train-hard, fight-easy' has long been understood. The WWII Wehrmacht aphorism “sweat saves blood� would have been familiar to Flavius Josephus whose 1st Century AD history observed that the Legions of Rome made their “exercises unbloody battles, and their battles bloody exercises�. Some of the last Korean War combat vets in the Canadian Forces growled similar advice in the author's ears as a young officer on training courses: “Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance … sir.� The lesson is endlessly repeated in most books of military history, because it has to be. We keep forgetting.

While intellectual laziness is common in our species, human beings often forget what they don't understand. Frequently, we don't understand because we simply find a particular thought too horrible to contemplate or linger over. This is one of the reasons why we keep being surprised; especially by terrorist attacks.

Garand

It is called the 7P Principle: Proper Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Senior NCO's in the Canadian Forces still pass it on to their young charges, even today.