Category Archives: The War

Let the games resume

The Soviets, er, the Rooskies, are at it again. Putin, it seems, wants the Cold War back in play.

Via Fresh Bilge 

Swiss Afghanistan

Imagine Afghanistan as brown and tan and rubble-strewn? Some of it is, certainly, but not the Switzerland-like 10,000-foot "foothills" of the Hindu Kush in these beautiful photos put up by Blackfive of a 91st Cav air assault. Clean out the jihadis, build some hotels and tourism could really take off.

State of war

StateofWar.JPG

This and Iraq Prime Minister Al-Maliki’s latest suckup to the mad mullahs are prime reasons to air strike them, but Robert Haddick at Westhawk doubts we’ll do it because, in the final analysis, it wouldn’t be permanently effective. Instead he foresees non-state terrorist groups going after Iran to stop their nuke program for their own reasons. Sunnis, I suppose. Al-Q biting the hands feeding it.

How they lied

Most newspaper libraries I’ve been in stock a current copy of the liberal Nation and, in their minds, to "balance" things out, a current copy of The New Republic, which is mainly liberal but pretends to objectivity. I have never seen current or even outdated copies of National Review, The Weekly Standard, or any other blatantly conservative mag. Don’t want impressionable young reporter minds polluted with contrary ideas, you know. Now the Confederate Yankee blog has figured out one of TNR’s anonymous confirming sources on the Beauchamp fiasco–very surprisingly, a normally very public public relations man for BAE Systems, the maker of the Bradley IFV, named Doug Coffey–and discovered that he was not asked to verify what Beauchamp reported, only some general queries. Now that he knows what the actual issue was, he is calling BS on Beauchamp’s report. Pretty slick TNR. You almost got away with it.

Phony hero

There’s more than wind and nukes in Amarillo. There’s a prosecution of a phony war hero. Now I can understand wannabees falsely claiming valor medals, but not some guy who actually served. What a sad character.

Via Jack Army 

Lies a soldier told

The New Republic’s "Baghdad Diarist" admits he erred (or, as Power Line says, the actual word is lied) about one of his three controversial reports. The others he’s apparently sticking to, and TNR claims (not very convincingly) to have anonymous sources corroborating them. Ah, those everpresent anonymous sources the MSM loves so much. So handy. His chain of command, meanwhile, says they can find no proof of the other two incidents, either. No word yet on Beauchamp’s fate. Ah, the wages of ambition.

UPDATE  The Army makes it official. They can find no evidence, etc., for the truth of any of it. TNR is sticking to its anonymous sources. Standoff, I guess you could say, except that Mr. Beauchamp is sans laptop and cellphone and, henceforth, is incommunicado. 

Maj. Thomas G. Bostick, Jr., R.I.P.

"Thomas Bostick was born in San Diego and moved to Llano after his father, Thomas G. Bostick Sr., ended his career in the Marines. Bostick joined the Army Reserve while at Llano High School, and after graduating in 1988, he made the Army his career."