Bugs on the Windshield

Yeah, this is a moderated blog, it is not a free speech zone. You want free speech? Get your own blog, or don’t be a blatantly obvious dickhead.

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Yesterday’s post resulted in a new blog record for hits for this little bloglet and generated a fair amount of commentary on Twitter. Some of that Twitter commentary was good (or at least constructive criticism), and some bad (mostly from some guilty consciences and outright hypocrites).

So be it. I don’t do any of this for fame or fortune, and I never have. I do this because I can and all I have ever been interested in is the end results. Also, because it’s fun…

Thank you to everyone that took the time to read my own considered opinions and hypothesis on the subject. Even to the small handful that seem to have really bad reading (and listening) comprehension skills.

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A couple of Barrett Brown type comments came in with all those hits. So, just for additional fun I’m gonna unlimber the old chainsaws on ‘em.

The first one was from…ahem…”AnotherAnon” with the e-mail of Anon at anony dot com (Seriously? Did you really think I was gonna just let that slide?), with a London IP address (I don’t suppose that’s real either, is it?)…

AA – “So big is his ego and lust for attention that he put a watermark into the text, that could have easily undone (by someone like this author) all his hard work- just to ensure he got ‘proper credit’ for this. Pathetic.”

R – That watermark wasn’t visible to the untrained eye and it didn’t take very long for trained professionals to spot it. If it was about ego and fame, why not just blast the logo in plain sight? So perhaps instead the watermark was there to enforce a short operational shelf life? Qaddafi’s loyalist counter-offensive began on March 2nd. On March 7th, the same day that Jesters little psy-ops operation began, The Gulf States, France and the UK went to the UN Security Council to demand a no-fly zone over Libya. I don’t suppose you actually took the time to read any of the links that I provided for you? You might even have noticed that Anonymous (that’s your party, right?) issued a statement on February 21st advising NATO to leave Libya alone. The loyalist counter-offensive stormed unchecked into eastern Libya, supported by loyalist air strikes and massive artillery barrages, against ill-prepared and lightly armed rebel infantry, until March 19th, when the first NATO (French) airstrikes began in support of the rebels. This leaves Anonymous, as a whole and in the worst case, openly supporting Qaddafi, and in the least, leaving the Libyan people to fend for themselves against tanks, jet fighter-bombers, attack helicopters, and heavy artillery. Just another in a very long and unbroken string of really bad public relations moves by Anonymous.

AA – “His motivation is being an attention whore, why bother to tweet when he gets a website to tango down? The job is done and that’s it, but not for this attention loving ‘hacker’!”

R – The Jester has stated his motivations on numerous occasions. In fact, The Jester even has a really handy little “About” page on his own bloglet, that covers at least some of those often stated motivations. Perhaps those tango down tweets are for the targets benefit, rather then yours? BTW, how come Anonymous factions and other black hat types have taken to using that exact same phrase when they hack government, police, and other websites and databases?

AA – “Beware of the fame monsters that you praise so lavishly whilst they are ‘good’ for the time being – just remember he trampled on the westboro members constitutionally given rights to free speech by ddosing their site, even though it was 100% legal.”

R – It seems to me that there are better, faster, and much safer ways to seek fame then rather quietly (in the grand scheme of things) screwing with professional religious terrorists heads. Just remember…Scientology? Would it blow your mind to know that Anonymous/LulzSec was right there with The Jester against the freaks of WBC, at the very same time? Do you even understand the differences between DoS (what The Jester did to WBC) and DDoS (What Anonymous apparently did to WBC)? This by the way, is yet more evidence that you didn’t actually read any of the links that I provided you, because if you had then you would know that I posted several times on that very subject, on this blog, when it happened, that same month and the month prior.

AA – “(Free speech protects speech you hate but who was the jester to decide?)”

R – There are always limits to free speech, always. Who is Anonymous to decide?

===

The second Barrett Brown type comment never even made it to moderation. It was flagged as spam automagically. This one came in from “your clown god is dead” with the e-mail address of spike at encyclopediadramitca dot se and an IP from Comcast in Danver, Massachusetts. Might wanna work on those proxy settings a bit there, eh?

Spike – “Um I think if th3j35t3r was really a military psyops campaign “they” would give a lot less fucks about stupid IRC drama and doxing people who hurt “their” feelings than jester does.”

R – Um, I think that if Anonymous was really all that concerned about the people, (you know, the so called 99%?), then they would give a lot more fucks about public relations. Because screwing with over 300 million Sony customers, 100 million Paypal customers, and defacing epileptic support websites is no way to win friends and influence enemies. I’m quite certain that it was Anonymous, and factions or friends thereof, that attempted to first dox The Jester, and has repeatedly since then wrongfully doxed numerous innocent people as being The Jester. I’m also quite certain that the vast majority of US military members do care very much when US citizens are threatened, after all, the vast majority of their own families are US citizens, with Sony products, and Paypal accounts.

R – That’s it, that’s all that Spike had to offer with his spam tagged proxy account. Um, that was a proxy you burned there, wasn’t it Spike?

DON’T
JUMP,
R

As Old as Warfare Itself…

…the art and practice of military psy-ops…

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“All war is deception”
-Sun Tzu

Spring of 1944. Operation Glimmer, Operation Taxable, Operation Titanic, Operation Quicksilver, Operation Fortitude South, Operation Bodyguard. Just some of the deception operations designed to fool the Nazi’s into believing that the D-Day invasion would take place at Pas de Calais France, instead of Normandy, France.

As history shows us, those pre D-Day deception plans were almost entirely successful. Even though those plans didn’t entirely fool an experienced combat general like Erwin Rommel, they did fool his commander, the dictator of Nazi Germany, into holding back his armored reserves for just long enough to get the Allied troops ashore and in force at Normandy.

Those operations had a shelf life, because obviously, at some point shortly after June 6th, 1944 (the actual landing date), or June 4th, 1944 (the planned landing date), the deception would be over.

For our younger readers from the online generation, in effect the WW2 Allies were trolling the Axis, and it worked, for as long as they needed it to work.

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Now let’s take a look at some modern military history. Specifically the Libyan revolution of 2012. (yeah, yeah, I know, it’s another Wikipedia link, like the others, it’ll have to do until the official history gets written)

We’re going to pay special attention to the events between March 7th and March 19th (the arrival of the first NATO air support).

Sometime on or around March 7th, the U.S. patriot hacker known as The Jester unleashed this little bit of military grade psy-ops.

Col. Qaddafi’s military was just like that of almost every other third-world dictatorship, in that military units that had the size and potential of overthrowing the dictatorship (armored, combat aircraft, artillery, foreign mercenaries), were almost always commanded by family members or close inner circle friends, whose own military expertise and capabilities are quite irrelevant when compared to their loyalty to the dictatorship. Jesters little psy-ops wouldn’t effect those leaders themselves, but it seems that it very much did cause Col. Qaddafi to question the loyalty of at least some of the Libyan military units not commanded by family or close friends. It may also have contributed to the decision making of at least some of the handful of Libyan military officers who actually did defect during this same time frame.

Whatever the actual effects of Jesters operation were at the time are unknown for now. What is known is that while Western governments were dithering, other third world dictatorships were backing Qaddafi, and factions of Anonymous were attacking NATO, almost nobody else did anything to help the Libyan rebels for as much as two almost crucial weeks.

Some further reading on this and slightly related subjects can be found in my own March of 2011 timeline (ayup, there is even a Scot Terbin linkie found in that month). Specifically this post, this post, this post, and this post.

Yes onliners, this means in other words, that The Jester trolled and pwned Col Qaddafi.

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So…

Is The Jester’s most recent Saladin project just more psy-ops or not? I don’t have the answer for that and as far as I know that answer can come from only one source, The Jester himself. What I do know is that like almost all such military and military related psy-ops programs and operations (even those run by civilians), it clearly has a specific target and strongly appears to have a limited operational time frame. This last is, of course, assuming that The Jesters detractors are correct about the details of Jester’s Saladin operation that they claim to have revealed, to the world, and most importantly, to the known targets of Saladin.

=

Let’s pose a hypothetical what-if here…

Let’s pretend, just for the moment, that The Jester is actually a small and very black US military intelligence project, designed to disrupt Islamic terrorist communications (among others)…

If that is the case, (and it is extremely unlikely, but not entirely impossible), then The Jesters detractors would have interfered with an ongoing US military operation, in a time of war. It wouldn’t rise to the occasion of outright treason, but it would be somewhat similar to the actions of US East Coast city mayors in early 1942 refusing to shut down their cities lights at night, even though those lights made it easier for Nazi subs to spot unarmed cargo ships off the US East Coast.

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Pretending that the jihadi terrorist groups don’t know who The Jester is and what he does won’t work for his detractors.  Neither will pretending that the jihadi terrorist groups don’t have their own hackers, either as members or allies. Because very obviously, they do.

…And assuming either of the above is just dumb at this point…

OBJECTS
IN THE
MIRROR,
R

NO.

Seriously?

Gateway Pundit raises an eyebrow.

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No, Charles Johnson (and the rest of the socialist Left), neo-nazi JT Ready was NOT an “extreme” right-winger. JT Ready was a neo-nazi, a member of the National SOCIALIST Movement (NSM).

His and his followers politics were and are currently much closer to the politics of those that you’ve so recently re-joined, Charles Johnson. JT Ready proved that beyond any shadow of a doubt when he and his heavily armed followers arrived at the Occupy Phoenix protest in October of 2011, not to confront the entirely Leftist protestors, but to join with them, to “protect” them from the police.

I’m going to explain this to you one more time, Charles Johnson. No matter how the Occupy Bowel Movement, stuffed to the gills with Anonymous/Ron Paul supporters (as was JT Ready), choose to spin JT Ready’s actions last October, his own words speak for themselves.

The neo-nazi’s are neither left nor right. They are, and always have been, an opportunistic third party that will leach onto whichever political wing that they feel is most ready to be infiltrated and hijacked at any time. That is exactly what all nazi parties have always done historically since 1921, and they’ve done so in every nation where they’ve sprung up and been tolerated enough to exist by both political wings.

Since 1948, the new nazi parties, world-wide, have also tended to gravitate to whichever political wing or school of thought was most consistently, vocally, and vehemently anti-Israel, and hence, anti-Jewish.

Pro-tip: Charles Johnson, that is currently the wing that you so recently returned too.

You did notice the Anonymous/Ron Paul bit back up there? Yeah. There is an extremely high (pun intended) percentage of left-wingers who follow and or support Ron Paul, maybe even a majority within the ranks of Anonymous, and Anonymous was the primary direction behind the founding and the sustainment of the failed Occupy Bowel Movement.

Yes, at least some members of Anonymous are aware of what we’ve known about Ron Paul since 2008, after all, Anonymous has hacked the databases of several neo-nazi sites. They don’t seem to care. Some of Anonymous’s Cabin Crew members are still around on Twitter, ask ‘em if they support Ron Paul, or just read through their public timelines, they’re not shy about it.

The Ron Paul forums and the Infowars freaks are already furiously trying to spin it away from themselves, but that bell was rung long ago too, wasn’t it?

…and you wondered how Ron Paul kept winning all those online polls? Duh…

Maybe those red hammer and sickle folks over at One People’s Project* can help you, Lizardoid Johnson, out a bit with some of the above, after all, I imagine at least some of them are rather disillusioned with the whole Anonymous/Occupy fiasco by now, considering what they’ve just learned over the last six months.

(*no linkie love for you commies, let ‘em google it if they really want too)

Yes, JT Ready campaigned, and lost, as a Republican party member. Between 2006 and 2008 he was shunned and disavowed by both the Republican party and the Tea Party.

“There is no room in the party of Lincoln for a Klansman like David Duke.”
-Jim Nicholson 1998

JT Ready showed up at Occupy Phoenix for the exact same reason that he was last running as a Democrat in his local Sheriffs race. David Duke supported his own bodyguard’s (Roy Armstrong) run for the House of Representatives, as a Democrat, in 2004 for the exact same reason. Because they are gravitating to the party where the most Jew hatred is currently tolerated.

Maybe the question here should be, are the neo-nazi’s following Charles Johnson back to the Left? Or perhaps, is Charles Johnson following the neo-nazi’s back to the Left?

Maybe Charles, you could try and remember the one thing that all of those groups have in common?

Clearly Winston Wolfe commenting over at GatewayPundit gets it.

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If it helps, none of it really matters. Do you know why?

Because it’s the economy, stupid.

IT’S NOT
ROCKET
SCIENCE,
R

And Again…

Five Machine Guns

I cannot add or subtract anything said there.

IT IS
WHAT
IT IS,
R

Full Stop…

Graphic: How an Israeli pre-emptive attack on Iran could play out…

This is just embarrassingly bad analysis.

The real distance between an unnamed IAF air base in the Israeli Negev and the Iranian Natanz facility is over 1,500km, one way.

The real distance between that same unnamed airbase in the Negev and the location of the former Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor (Operation Opera) is 966km, one way.

The IAF raid on the PLO headquarters in Tunis, 1985 (Operation Wooden Leg) used just eight F-15′s, that had to be refueled twice by a pair of 707 tankers, once on the inbound leg and once on the outbound leg. Covering a distance of 2,060km each way.

The Entebbe Raid (Operation Thunderbolt) used no fighters or ground strike aircraft at all. It used four C-130 cargo planes, a single 707 headquarters plane, and a single 707 hospital plane. It also used a major refueling stop-over in Kenya.

Unlike the Iraqi Osirak project, the Iranians are well known to have dispersed their nuclear program over at least a hundred different locations.

=

Beyond the lack of the most basic of map reading skills and historical knowledge of the subject demonstrated by that graphic (somebody got paid for that?)…

Israel is reported to have between 50 and 100 Jericho II missiles, and a small handful of Jericho III missiles in service, in total. These missiles are both long lead production time weapons, and Israel’s only major second strike capability. Although they are extremely accurate, and can reach most, if not all of the known target sites in Iran, they are too few as well as too difficult and expensive to produce. At best Israel should be unwilling to use no more then a handful of those ICBM’s, with conventional warheads, and then only on the furthest distance targets. With no guarantee of success or possible follow up.

The IAF is known to possess around 50 single seat F-15 Eagle’s, 25 F-15E Strike Eagles, and somewhere around 300 or so F-16 Falcon’s. To support these aircraft the IAF is believed to possess 20 or less (seven confirmed) long range air-to-air tanker aircraft (note that above, the 1985 Tunis strike required two tankers for just eight strike aircraft). The National Post graphic has Israel risking fully one fourth of its air force (with range induced minimal weapon loads), without the ability to cover all of the known targets, or confirm post strike effects.

The CH-53 helicopter has a range of around 1,000km, and would also require air-to-air refueling for such a mission. The IDF is actually rather small in manpower, its commando/special forces units are even fewer in number. Certainly not enough to cover even a bare minimum of the known targets.

The graphic also mentions “missiles from the sea”, Israel possesses just three active Dolphin class submarines, each capable of carrying a total of 16 torpedoes or cruise missiles in a mixed load. There are three more in production or on order. Israeli submarine launched cruise missiles are known to have a range of around 1,500km. This means the Israeli subs would have to be almost within the entrance of the Persian Gulf in order to reach all of the known targets in Iran, with just 48 cruise missiles in maximum total.

“Dogs with explosives trained to go down tunnels…” Seriously? Is this an offshoot of the Zionist sharks with laser beams project?

All of the above information is easily found through open sources online (except of course, for those dogs).

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Aside from the suicide bomber dogs (really?), theoretically all of the above weapons systems combined might be enough to cover all of the known targets, with at least one weapon per target. But all of this apparently assumes that the Iranians won’t attempt to defend themselves from such an attack. Which is a seriously dangerous and stupid assumption to make.

The National Post graphic makes little mention of that, but does waste much space on known and theoretically possible Iranian responses, including flying suicide boats in the Persian Gulf (but no mention of the known Iranian Navy/IRGC small boat swarm tactics). It also mentions Iran’s notoriously inaccurate and unreliable long range missiles, at which point we’re bordering on bad science fiction. Those missiles are more of a threat to land in Iraq, Jordan, or Egypt, none of whom has anything like the Israeli national anti-missile defenses.

The mythical Georgian and Azerbaijan bases? While those two nations might be willing to support such an endeavor, they both share a border with Russia, who has already made its feelings regarding an attack on Iran well known. And Azerbaijan also shares a border with Iran, which would place those two nations at war with each other. (Don’t tell me, Sy Hersch is also the source of the suicide bomber dogs story?)

=

Of course, if the US is involved, all such calculations go right out the window (and the suicide bomber dogs, commandos, and sharks with laser beams aren’t needed). Although badly hampered by budget cuts and fifty year old bombers, the USAF and USN does still have the capability to strike at all of the known Iranian nuclear project sites, and all of its air defense locations, and all of its fighter bases, and all of its naval facilities, and all of its headquarters buildings, all in a single massive (and hellishly expensive) strike, with plenty of weapons left over for any follow on strikes. There is precious little that the Iranian military could do to prevent a USAF/USN “shock and awe” campaign. Except to attempt to close the Persian Gulf with mines, and/or attack Iraq, after the fact…

Perhaps a better plan for non-proliferation would be in order?

STRIKING
THE
MEME,
R

The Stupid is Strong…

…weapons grade even…

We’ll start with the obvious, and somewhat less technical.

The US military only uses 20mm, 25mm, 30mm, and 120mm Depleted Uranium (DU) rounds. They are all for cannons, either ground or air. Hence “dropping” them isn’t going to be nearly as effective as actually firing them from their purpose designed weapons. I suppose I could spend another page or so listing all of the various ground and air platforms and weapons systems that use cannons in those four calibers. But there are already plenty of open-source locations for that, and we can quickly rule out all of the ground mounted weapons and systems, as dropping those might result in a sore foot, bashed fingernail or two, or some other clearly not life threatening kinetic event. There is no known confirmation of the combat usage, or in many cases even the existence of any other type of DU munition in the US inventory.

We can also rule out all but the two armed attack helicopter types that were actually used over Libya.

The first would be British WAH-64′s, which engaged pro-Qaddafi targets on at least 39 missions. Only one of those is noted for the WAH-64 using their M-230 30mm chain guns, a brief engagement with some inflatable boats. The remaining engagements all reportedly appear to have been rocket (CRV-7) and missile (Hellfire) attacks from long range. Seems that after some of the early missions reported being engaged by ground fire that included AK-47 rifles, the British wisely choose to take advantage of their available stand-off missile and rocket ranges. The standard round of 30mm ammunition for the Apaches M-230 30mm gun is the M-789 HEDP (high explosive, dual purpose). It is not a DU round. There are reports and rumors of a DU round being available for the M-230, but no confirmation of any combat use, or even rumor since 2004. Nor are there any reports of UK WAH-64′s being armed with DU ammo of any kind. Although it seems entirely possible UK Apaches might have used DU ammo, the much cheaper, standard M-789 HEDP round is and rather obviously proved quite sufficient at dealing with Qadaffi’s rolling museum of Cold War junk. After all, that’s what it was designed for…

The other would be the French owned Eurocopter Tiger. Those use an older design GIAT 30mm gun, that cannot feed or fire US made M-230 ammo. Again, I have seen no confirmed reports of French usage of 30mm DU ammo, anywhere, ever. Although there are rumors that the French (and almost every other single nation that uses nuclear power plants) have made DU ammo, only the US and Russia have confirmed using DU ammo in combat.

This reduces us to fixed wing aircraft. (USMC AH-1W Sea Cobra’s, which do have a purpose designed 20mm DU round, were not used over Libya).

We can begin by ruling out all of the EU aircraft. We can also rule out almost all of the US aircraft, except the two most likely, (and in one case purpose-designed) aircraft that might have had occasion to strafe ground targets with their on-board guns.

The USMC AV-8B Harrier and the USAF A-10 Warthog. Both of which have purpose designed DU rounds available, in the A-10′s case the DU round is the standard round.

One squadron of USAF A-10′s were based out of Italian bases to strike at targets in and on the coastline of Libya. For about three whole weeks (withdrawn on April 19th). It appears that the only engagement by those A-10′s reported is a strike against the Libyan Coast Guard.

USMC AV-8B Harriers from the Amphibious Assault Ship USS Kearsarge (LHD-3) were also used in strike missions over Libya.

It remains unreported if either the AV-8B’s or the A-10′s conducted any ground strafing with cannon fire attacks against pro-Qadaffi forces and installations, although it is entirely possible. It just seems rather unlikely given the availability of precision long range strike weapons for both aircraft, the rapid disappearance of Qaddafi’s rolling museum of armor once the air strikes began, and the prevalence of ground based short ranged handheld anti-aircraft weapons, amongst both sides.

The official USAF, USG, and UK response is that no DU weapons were used in Libya, but there does remain a possibility that at least some might have been used, at least along the coast line.

Assuming such strafing attacks actually happened, and used DU ammo…We’re talking about any where from zero to less then a few hundred pounds of actual DU being fired (30mm projectiles weigh between 100 grams and 400 grams, depending on the round type).

I suppose I could now dive into the long and somewhat boring arguments over whether or not DU is “safe” for human consumption, but I won’t. Because the purpose of projectile ammunition is to kill things and destroy people, and it really doesn’t much matter if its lead, tungsten, DU, or any other such material. They all have the same end results.

But I will point out that chronologically, the sole originating source of the original screaming blue bloody murder stories about “DU in Libya” is Russia, mostly through its Kremlin owned mouthpiece RT News (21st century Protocols of Pravda). Rather unsurprisingly RT does not seem to have ever mentioned the thousands of Russian 125mm DU tank rounds fired into Georgia, or the millions of tons of DU, cluster-bomb, Napalm and other Fuel-Air Munitions expended on Chechnya. I will note that the story was quickly picked up and parroted by Iranian news sources, followed by the western tin-foil hat brigade (Alex Jones and company), and then finally by the extreme western Left, and the much smaller extreme right. The latter three where Ron Paul gets the bulk of his fans.

And I will note that the anti-Qaddafi forces stopped complaining about 14.5mm and larger weapons being used against them by the pro-Qaddafi forces, right after they acquired 14.5mm and larger weapons of their own…

So, what to say about the Twitter account known as P0wd3r seen in the screenshot above?

Isn’t free speech wonderful? It allows fools to reveal exactly how stupid, uninformed, and misinformed they actually are.

But I think we’ve all already learned as much about all who are involved with or are fanbois of Anonymous…

BUT
WHAT
ABOUT,
R

Afghanistan III (still circling the bowl)

Afghanistan…again. (and I strongly urge all who still care to read that link)

The mistake wasn’t in going in. That’s where the enemy was in 2001.

The mistake wasn’t entirely in staying there. It made a useful location for temporary small scale raiding bases and/or a single large pre-invasion base, into where the enemy had retreated too.

The first mistake was in allowing the enemy to escape. In defense of the US military, it’s my understanding that they went in with just about everything they could get there, as fast as they could get it there. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban just ran faster, into Pakistan’s FATA. Eight years of Commander-in-Chief Bill Clinton’s rabid military size cuts and seemingly endless mini-invasions throughout the 1990′s took their toll.

The second mistake was allowing the enemy to re-group almost unhindered, in the Pakistani FATA regions. Random UAV strikes and harsh words from a woman are simply not going to work up in those hills. There are only two ways to deal with those kind of hill folks. Either you go up into those hills and deal with them one way or the other, or you leave them alone. The problem with leaving them alone is that sometimes they get bored, angry, or overly inspired, and then they come rampaging down from those hills. It used to be that was usually just a local issue for the poor folks that lived in the valley’s. It’s the 21st century now, now those enraged hill folks can rampage halfway around the planet, and fly hijacked jumbo jets into skyscrapers. Freakishly, that seems to inspire them more…

The third mistake was attempting to protect the Afghan population by fighting in amongst the Afghan population. The more occupation troops that arrived the larger the numbers of Afghans recruited by the enemy. See, if you anger the folks down in the local valley’s enough, they will likely join up with those rampaging hill folks. Perhaps if the British had dusted off their old 1800′s military history files, and the American policy makers had listened to what the British already knew…and the Russians had just got done relearning (’79-’89) about the rampaging hill folks of the Pakistani-Afghanistan border regions. If wishes were horses, all men would ride…

All those surges, mini-surges, and rotations were simply never going to be enough to hold those borders, nor protect the bulk of the Afghan population once the Taliban reorganization progressed beyond the small unit cross border hit and run raids of 2002-03. No matter how well trained, motivated, supplied, and led in the field those troops were and are.

No amount of strategic mumbo-jumbo PDF’s and Powerpoint surrealistic art can overcome the simple geographic fact that Afghanistan is landlocked. No amount of female led diplomacy could overcome the fact that significant and controlling members of all of Afghanistan’s male dominated female subjugating neighbors either hate us openly or barely tolerate us for our money. A simple, yet surprisingly complicated, bit of basic logistical calculations reveals the theoretical maximum number of troops, of any kind, that can be safely deployed, and supplied, entirely by air, in such a situation. (Theoretical because such a number is classified, and if its not then it better damn well be – an open source based guess is the best that I can do)

When that theoretical number was exceeded (2006), the fourth mistake was made. Either go up into those hills and deal with those angry rampaging religiously inspired hill folks, borders be damned, or leave.

The fifth mistake was COIN. Or a doubling down on the third and fourth mistakes. Because it worked in Iraq, or something like that…

The sixth mistake was the West Point surrender speech. If you announce your withdrawal date to your unbeaten enemy, then you have lost the battle. The death of Osama bin Laden might have offset that a bit, if it hadn’t revealed just how duplicitous the Pakistani government really was and still is.

You can call all of the above Monday morning quarterbacking if you want. You can call me a chairborne ranger if you want. But you cannot call me wrong, because I have been saying all of the above about the Afghanistan war theater, fairly consistently, across dozens of forums and websites since 2002, and on this little bloglet since 2008.

The new plan still isn’t a plan, because it still does not mention the last battalion, last company, and last squad to leave Afghanistan, or how, when, and where from they will do so. But it does leave over 90,000 US troops wondering who is going to be last on the list.

The duplicity of Pakistan reveals that failed third world dictatorship is also a nuclear weapon armed nation at the mercy of the very proxy armies that it created (from those angry hill folks) and most certainly not a viable ground supply or evacuation route.

The allies, in spite of all the surging, re-surging, base building and Powerpoint slides are once again struggling with internal supply routes.

Which has much to do with vacating most of the indefensible eastern borders, ceding control of those regions to the woefully unprepared and ill-motivated Afghan Army, which promptly lost control over those regions to the Taliban. Otherwise known as those angry, rampaging, well inspired hill folks, who are supported by Pakistan in the east and Iran in the west.

LAST
EXIT
LEATHERNECK,
R

The Game is Over…

NO
FURTHER
QUESTIONS,
R

Goodnight Ronnie…

Ronnie Montrose – November 29, 1947 – March 3, 2012 RIP

SPACE
STATION
#5,
R

Goodnight Andrew…

Thank you for everything. You’ve left a huge hole in the line, we’ll do our best to fill it.

GONE
AWAY,
R