A concerned citizen writes:

In the December 2003 issue of LandPowerTransformation, "an Army Colonel in Baghdad" writes:

"Every body needs two weapons. Forget M4s. They don't get enough muzzle velocity generated to go through cinderblocks but M16s do. We need to rethink small caliber for combat in cities. Need something that kills the close in target not pokes little holes in it. Something like a Thompson submachine gun with a little more powder behind it."

Such a weapon exists. However, it's manufactured by a Belgian company, Fabrique Nationale (FN). It's called the P90.

EDITOR: I concur. We need maximum bang ounce-for-ounce on every Soldier. We also should replace the current wimpy 9mm (read all the Afghan/Iraq combat AARs) for the 7.5mm mini-rifle cartridge in a robust pistol like the "Five-Seven" pictured below:

Phil West writes in:

"The bit about this that really got my interest was the comment about the Israelis using 'heavily armoured HMMWVs'

How do they do this that works so well?

Found this image:

Pasty faces in civilian cars? Wear make-up. White South African commandos always black up like Al Johnson because white Soldiers are prefered targets"

An Army wife writes in on the lack of sleep:

"I read this letter with interest and wished that my husband's schedule was as light as the one cited. He is a mid-level NCO with XVIII Airborne Corps. He leaves the house for PT at 5:30 am each morning. The "stated" brigade policy is that the Soldiers are to be released from PT at 7:30 am; we live fewer than 10 min. from his duty station, and he rarely arrives home before before 8am. We have ceased to expect the 4-day weekends--he, among many others in his company, often is expected to work on one or more days of these weekends; catching up on paperwork, TA-50 layouts, etc. that couldn't be fit into the "regular" work week. An "early night" for him is arriving home around 1800-1830.

Pity the NCO that live 20-30 minutes off-post.

He often works through most of lunch, hoping to be be able to spend a little while with the kids before they have to go to bed. He has missed almost as many soccer games and school awards ceremonies as he did when he was in Afghanistan. Multiply him times the hundreds and thousands of Soldiers who are constantly being asked to cram 28 hours worth of work into 24 hours worth of day, and it's no wonder our force is so burned out. He joked that maybe he ought to go back to Afghanistan so he could get some rest.

Ha ha!

Thanks for letting me opine." A Grateful Nation -- Yeah, Right!

New Zealand member of Parliament, Rodney Hide shares the following true horror story from the seas of the Pacific in WWII to today's inhumane bureaucrats.....

"The Queen and I bid you a very warm welcome home. Through all the great trials and sufferings which you have undergone at the hands of the Japanese you have been constantly in our thoughts. We know from reports we have already received how heavy those sufferings have been. We know also that these have been endured by you with the highest courage. We mourn with you the death of so many of your gallant comrades. With all our hearts we hope that your return from captivity will bring you and your families a full measure of happiness which you may long enjoy together."

-- King George VI: Telegram to returning POWs

Telegraphist Ross Lynneberg returned home from his war at 4pm Tuesday 27 November 1945. He started work next morning at John Newton and Sons soap factory. He worked his entire life. He never grumbled.

Mr Lynneberg is of a generation the like of which we will never see again.

He had been mobilised early in 1940. He served through the Pacific with the Royal NZ Navy. Our government then transferred him to the Royal Navy. He and three comrades were shipped through to Hong Kong.

The timing was poor. Very poor. He arrived in Hong Kong the day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. That same day they attacked Hong Kong. The colony fell on Christmas Day. The Japanese took Mr Lynneberg and a great many others prisoner.

Conditions were bad. Very bad. Mr Lynneberg suffered malnutrition and dry beriberi. His fellow POWs died at the rate of several a day. He was held in Hong Kong for nine months. He was then shipped through to Japan.

On 27 September 1942 Mr Lynneberg found himself one of 1,816 POWs stowed into three holds on the freighter "Lisbon Maru" bound for Japan.

Mr Lynneberg was in number one hold.

"It was impossible for everyone to lie down at the same time so many of us took turns and many were unable to sleep for more than a few minutes because of their beriberi. The latrine was a covered trough on the deck while drinking water was from a tank on deck but those who partook of it went sick with a type of dysentery."

It was a shocking trip. It was about to get a lot worse. The "Lisbon Maru" carried no Red Cross markings to signal that POWs were stuffed in her holds. On the night of 31 September, the submarine USS "Grouper" got on her tail believing her to be a troop carrier. She waited for first light. At dawn she fired six torpedoes and caught the "Lisbon Maru" on the stern with one. The "Lisbon Maru" was mortally damaged.

The Japanese commander Lt Hideo Wada ordered the hatches battened down. He then transferred the 778 Japanese troops that were on board to the destroyer "Toyokuni Maru" leaving the guard, crew and POWs on board.

"Our next request was to go to the latrines but this wasn't granted so the few buckets we had amongst us were used and were soon overflowing. We asked to empty them but were not allowed so by the evening the air was thick and nasty tasting due to the smell associated with dysentery. We also learnt there was no food available and with sunset they battened us down completely by covering the hatch with a tarpaulin and drove in wedges to keep it in place. To top this off the heavy steel wire cables used in the towing effort to reach shallow water were placed on top."

There was now no means of exit and no fresh airflow. The conditions worsened very rapidly.

"The air had now become very thick and even the fittest of us were sweating and panting, while several of the sick who had been sent to our hold were raving mad and were screaming out for air and water alternately. I myself had about a mouthful of water left in my water bottle which every now and again I'd empty into my mouth, sluice it around and return it back to the bottle for next time."

"That night I spent checking my watch wondering, among many things, why the minutes went around so slowly."

The men in number two hold managed to get into contact with RN men in number one hold by tapping code on the bulkhead. They could talk to those in number three hold through a vent. They learned that conditions in number one were similar to their own. The conditions in number three were getting desperate.

Number three hold was taking water. The pumps had to be manned. Each man would do about six strokes on the pump before fainting because of the extreme heat and lack of air. In number two hold, in similar conditions, they found that by lying flat and not moving they remained conscious. Two men died in hold number one from diphtheria.

By dawn 2 October, twenty-four hours after the torpedo had struck, the ship began to lurch and stagger. It was clear that she was going to sink. Since all requests to the Japanese had been ignored or refused, Lt Colonel Stewart authorised a small party to attempt a break out.

One of the men produced a kitchen knife that had gone undetected by the Japanese. Lt HM Howell climbed the ladder in pitch darkness to attempt to cut an opening. Trying to hang on with one hand, while thrusting the knife with the other was too much -- Howell gave up due to lack of oxygen.

At 08:10, Captain Shigeru sent a flag message to the "Toyokuni Maru" requesting permission for "all" to abandon ship. The reply was that a ship would come alongside and take off the Japanese guards and crew, but not the POWs.

At 09:00 Lt Howell tried again. This time he succeeded.

Lt Howell and Lt Potter plus one or two others climbed onto the deck. They saw some gunners trying to get through the portholes from number three hold onto the well-deck. Howell and Potter unscrewed a bulkhead door and let them out.

They then walked slowly toward the bridge asking to be allowed to address the captain of the ship. The Japanese opened fire with their rifles, killing one man, and wounding Lt GC Hamilton. They fired again, hitting Lt Potter and one or two other ranks who had climbed onto the deck. Lt Potter subsequently died. The remaining men returned to the hold and reported to Colonel Stewart that the ship was very low in the water and evidently about to sink.

Suddenly the ship lurched, and began sinking by the stern, the water rushing into the now open hold. The forward section remained protruding from the water for about an hour.

Lt Colonel Stewart gave the order to abandon ship. The Japanese soldiers and sailors standing aboard ships alongside fired at the escaping prisoners including those swimming in the water.

Ross Lynneberg survived the mad rush out of number one hold.

"The hatch boards were slid aside making an opening to fresh air and causing a mad scramble up the stairs -- people trampling over screaming bodies that would never leave the hold. Many of the dead had been crushed under foot in the mad rush to leave the hold after which there were some of us sorting out items we wished to salvage."

"Having collected the articles I wanted, I made my way on deck to find it over-crowded, with the sea breaking over the hatch next to our vacated one, the stern was well under with the bow well up. I stood for a few minutes then asked why they weren't taking to the water and was told by many that they couldn't swim. To this my response was that it was a good time to learn and if they weren't going over the side then make way for one who would be."

About four Japanese ships were standing-by but they made no attempt to assist the prisoners. Ropes were dangling from the ships. As prisoners tried to climb them they were allowed to get within inches of the deck, only to be kicked back over the side.

The plan changed once Chinese junks and sampans started picking up POWs. The Japanese realised that if they could not kill them all then they had to look like they were trying to effect a rescue.

The Japanese had intended to let the prisoners all drown. The aim was to blame the Americans for the loss.

The POWs could have all been saved had the Japanese transferred them at the same time they had transferred their own troops.

Mr Lynneberg was a very good swimmer. He swam one-and-a-half to two miles against a fast running current. The Japanese boats were using their props to kill POWs in the water beside him but Mr Lynneberg managed to avoid being sucked under. He eventually managed to scramble aboard a Japanese patrol boat.

"On the day the Lisbon sunk we were lucky for the sun was shining and it dried and warmed us but for the following two days it was cold, wet and windy -- so cold was it that three or four who were too weak to move about at night and keep themselves warm were found frozen stiff in the morning. The other two lads and myself took turns sharing my shirt -- we would cuddle together, rub each other's back -- in fact we tried practically all possible promotions of circulation to try and keep ourselves warm. As for food -- that was still missing although the Japs when they picked us up, supplied us with hot milk and biscuits -- so except for an occasional stew our meals for the next two days was the rice that the Japs hadn't eaten made into rice balls and then you had to be lucky to get one or a portion off one from your chums."

On 5 October all the prisoners who had been recaptured were assembled on the dock at Shanghai for a roll call. Of the original 1,816 prisoners, 970 answered their names. 846 had perished. The "Lisbon Maru" had proved a death ship.

Thirty-five of the worst dysentery patients were left in Shanghai and the remainder were taken aboard the SS Shinsei Maru. Five men later died. "One we buried at sea on our way to Japan was NZD RNVR Murdo Stewart [from Christchurch] who died on 10 October 1942, the night before we reached Japan."

On arrival at Moji en route for Osaka fifty more very sick prisoners were dropped off at Kokura with a similar number at Hiroshima. Five hundred went on to Kobe and the remainder to Osaka. 200 died during the first winter from diphtheria, diarrhoea, pneumonia, and malnutrition.

Mr Lynneberg spent the remainder of the War at Osaka 1 and 2, and Notogawa POW camps. "[On my arrival at Osaka] I was suffering badly from malnutrition and dry beriberi so that while the fit boys started work after about six weeks, those like myself who couldn't work were sent to a place called a hospital which was located under a grandstand in a sports arena and here at least five lads would die each 24 hours. The number of patients were around 90-100 and every few days a lorry would bring in fresh cases, some of whom had not survived their journey -- many of the remainder so far gone that they survived only a few hours."

Miraculously, and through extreme will power and physical toughness, Mr Lynneberg survived. He recovered. After three months he was shifted back to the camp and was sent to work in cement works, a foundry, on the wharves, at a timber yard and reclaiming land from a lake.

There was a grim humour occasionally in the camps. Mr Lynneberg remembers some of the graffiti in the toilets: "At the going down of the Sun [Japanese] and in the mourning we will remember them".

Mr Lynneberg had a very tough war. He suffered malaria. He was subject to cruel and unusual punishment and probable medical experimentation: "About this time we were subjected also to what I think were experiments -- using us as guinea pigs -- for on returning to camp after work for some days we were given injections, the method used certainly not being of our hygienic standard."

"On one occasion a Yank was made to settle into a fire tub of water where next morning he was found frozen dead."

"Then while working near the camp one day a B-29 went over head and later we heard an explosion and saw a column of smoke rise skyward with a large mushroom top. I thought good work for it seemed as if the bomber must have hit an ammunition factory and this gave us another three days in the camp before returning to work. One afternoon on our return to camp from a working party there was a strange Jap officer asking if anyone knew anything about radiation poisoning -- we had never heard of it. Shortly after this while at work a guard came cycling on to the job site shouting something to our guard who immediately dropped his rifle and took off on the push bike never to be seen again."

Mr Ross Lynneberg lived where so many had died. He made it home to his family and his fiancée. He started work the very next day. He worked hard all his life. Only when researching his memoirs did he discover that he hadn't been paid his full wages while a POW. He discovered the error after requesting his service file.

The deal had been that he was to be paid by the Royal Navy and topped up to the Royal NZ Navy rate of pay by the New Zealand government. There was what they call in the military an "administrative oversight". There was no pay for him when he arrived in Hong Kong. His pay sheets had not been organised. The paymaster advanced him $HK30 because he had no pay and no money. His pay was to be sorted out but the Japanese put paid to that. He was subsequently notified missing presumed dead and even his top-up pay was stopped. His top-up pay was at least sorted out upon his return home.

The confusion over his base Royal Navy pay was that his father was banking his service pay. His father was working a double-shift at the soap factory and also putting the pay from one shift in the same account for his son. Mr Ross Lynneberg simply assumed that the tidy sum in the account when he arrived home was from his Royal Navy pay.

Having discovered the error, Mr Lynneberg wrote to Minister of Defence Hon Mark Burton on 29 March 2000. He explained that his pay was outstanding. The Minister responded two months later simply to confirm his war service and to conclude, "As this matter is entirely at the discretion of the British Authorities, there is unfortunately nothing that I can do to assist you in obtaining the arrears of pay which you are seeking".

Not satisfied, Mr Lynneberg wrote to me on 8 January 2002. I went to see him. We had a great day together. Mr Lynneberg is healthy, fit and very quick-witted. I very much admire him. I obtained his service file both from New Zealand and Great Britain. I researched his case.

I set his case out to the Prime Minister on 19 March 2002. Mr Lynneberg and Mr Burton have been corresponding ever since.

I calculated that Mr Lynneberg was owed 313 pounds, 12 shillings and three pence from both the New Zealand and British governments.

Hon Mark Burton finally concluded on 26 September 2003 that Mr Lynneberg is owed 238 pounds and 10 shillings all from the British government. He then concluded -- once again -- that there was nothing he could do.

Adjusting for inflation, and converting to New Zealand dollars, Mr Lynneberg is owed $17,500 not including interest.

Our government accepts that Mr Lynneberg was short-changed. They just don't accept any responsibility for it. They say there is nothing that they can do.

This week the Holmes Show highlighted Mr Lynneberg's plight. Hon Mark Burton explained on TV: "It is not an isolated case. There may be any number of people with any number of grievances they want resolved and we can't simply in an ad hoc way see the government pick those things up".

It's true that there are many New Zealanders with a grievance wanting a hand-out. But I know of only one POW with his pay outstanding.

Prime Minister Helen Clark in the House declared that I was, "Asking the New Zealand government to pay the wages owed by another government."

This is true too. I believe New Zealand taxpayers should pay the wages owed to Mr Lynneberg. It doesn't look likely that the Brits will pay up. So we should. It was our government on our behalf that sent Mr Ross Lynneberg to war.

I believe that we owe Mr Lynneberg and his generation more than we can ever repay them. But we surely owe Mr Lynneberg the pay that our government promised. He signed up to fight for our country. Our government agreed to pay him wages -- and to top up any shortfall from his Royal Navy pay. Well, it was short. The government admits that at least. We owe him his top-up. Let's pay him -- and let two governments wrangle forever about whether the bill should be picked up by British or New Zealand taxpayers.

Let's not leave it to an 82-year-old veteran to fight for the pay that he is owed with the British government half-the-world away.

Mr Lynneberg has fought his war. He deserves our support and respect.

Mr Lynneberg sat up in the public gallery in our parliament at question time this week. It was the first time he had been to parliament since he was a school pupil. I asked the Prime Minister about the pay that he is owed. Our Prime Minister ducked and weaved to try to blame his pay woes on the British. It was the day after Armistice Day.

MPs were very moved by Mr Lynneberg's plight. They wanted to have a whip around to make up his pay. But Mr Lynneberg thanked us and politely said no. He doesn't want charity. Just his pay.

In the same year that Mr Lynneberg wrote his first letter to Hon Mark Burton, Brian Gary Rees was convicted for assault, for carrying a knife in a public place, resisting arrest and fraud. At the time of his crimes Rees was the same age as Mr Lynneberg was when he once again stood on New Zealand soil home from his war.

Rees beat 51-year-old Mr Michael Shanks unconscious. Mr Shanks had gone to the aid of two women Mr Rees was abusing. For his trouble, he suffered a broken nose and cheek bone, a chipped tooth and cuts to his nose and tongue.

Rees was sentenced to two-and-a-half years jail on 7 March 2000 for the assault. He received other jail sentences, but these were to be served concurrently. Taking into account remand time, parole and good behaviour, he was due for release in April or May 2001, after just 13 or 14 months. But there was another "administrative oversight" and he was not released until late September.

So he served only one year and seven months of his two-and-a-half year sentence. But that still meant that he had been kept in jail 149 days more than he legally should have been. I would have said good job. But our government paid Rees $42,000 compensation. He got $281 a day for each extra day he was in jail, even though his actual jail term was much shorter than his sentence.

The Japanese held Mr Ross Lynneberg prisoner for 1,374 days. He doesn't even get paid the wages he was due, let alone the $281 a day that we had to pay to Rees. One man served his country. The other is a thug. One gets a pay out. The other doesn't even get paid.

The Prime Minister wrote to me last year declaring me "disingenuous" for comparing Mr Lynneberg's case to that of Rees's. Mr Lynneberg, she wrote, "was the victim of particular circumstances in the Second World War over which the New Zealand government had no direct control. Rees, on the other hand, was the subject of an administrative mistake by a government agency."

She neglected to note that Mr Lynneberg was a serviceman. And that Rees was a criminal.

And so Mr Lynneberg still has not been paid -- after all these years. Around-and-around the political-bureaucratic merry-go-round he goes.

I have had so many questions for Mr Lynneberg each time that we have met. I asked him why he started work the day after he returned home. Why not take some time off to recover and enjoy time with his family and fiancée? His laconic reply: "Working in the soap factory was a whole lot easier than working for the Japanese." He is from another time. He is of a different generation.

Mr Lynneberg is a living piece of history. He witnessed the bombing of Hiroshima. Here is the man living that we see in grainy film clips emerging gaunt and starved from Japanese POW camps. Those poor men looked more like stick insects than human beings. I can't imagine how he survived what he did.

He is not as Minister Mark Burton implies just another whinger wanting a handout.

I watched him looking down on our parliament with bemusement on his face. He will see off this Prime Minister and Minister of Defence. He will see me off from parliament too. Mickey Savage was Prime Minister when he went off to fight.

But I will get him his pay before I go. We owe it to him.

We won't see his like ever again. We do truly need to remember them. Not only those who died. But those like Mr Lynneberg who lived.

HOT EMAIL AND FAX ADDRESS

Tell Helen Clark to pay Mr Ross Lynneberg the wages he's owed. And please send Mr Lynneberg's story on to your friends and colleagues:

pm@ministers.govt.nz

Fax: 04 473 3579

You can also read a copy of Minister of Defence Mark Burton's letter admitting that Mr Ross Lynneberg's pay was 238 pounds and 10 shillings short but that there is "nothing" that he can do to assist him with the shortfall:

http://rodneyhide.com/HideSight/Addenda/20031114.php

HideSight is a regular column from Rodney Hide MP sent from his Epsom office. To subscribe to HideSight visit http://rodneyhide.com or read the HideSight archive at http://rodneyhide.com/HideSight/Archive/

To unsubscribe go to http://rodneyhide.com/HideSight/Unsubscribe_Request.php?list_id=3&email=Rodn ey.Hide@parliament.govt.nz

GEOSTRATEGIC

Does Bush Administration want to get re-elected? Time to Return to WAR in Iraq: It ain't over yet

By Emery Nelson and Mike Sparks

The U.S. Army is mishandling the occupation of Iraq which is actually a small-scale guerrilla war in the same way it mishandled South Vietnam by intermingling with the populace badly and creating anti-American resentment resulting in a dead American G.I. every day. If the Bush Administration does not force the U.S. Army to handle the guerrilla war in Iraq correctly, George Bush will be kicked out of office in the next election. More than interests of preserving power making America's Army do the right thing in Iraq is the right thing to do. We do not have a LTC John Paul Vann in uniform today, but we would be wise to study his life's work in the book, "A Bright Shining Lie".

We are losing an American each day in Iraq due to U.S. Army QUALITATIVE ineptitude not just because we lack the quantity of troops required to do the job. The American Army has esconced itself in the cities of Iraq, living comfortably in former Saddam palaces and hotels with officers not living with their men just like the German Army did in France during WWII that caused them to be "caught with their pants down" (literally and figuratively) on D-Day. The Americans living in these cities thinking these are safe "rear" areas driving around in unarmored HMMWV, FMTV and soon thin-skinned Stryker rubber-tired trucks have become the ugly occupiers as they go about kicking down the doors of homes to hunt down remnants of Saddam's regime. If Americans stay in Baghdad it will become another Saigon with an economy warped to meet Amereican G.I. wants furthering resentment as we provide easy targets for the enemy to kill/wound. "We are destroying the Iraqis in order to save them" as we go about fighting the bad guys the way we want to.

Meanwhile the Iraqi resistance has chosen asymmetric tactics; they avoid American infantry kicking down doors in cities prefering instead to blew up with remote control bombs our supply truck convoys driven by truck drivers and mechanics along a 350 kilometer stretch of highway from Baghdad to Mosul. American commanders on the scene say they don't have enough infantry to protect themselves in the cities and do war criminal raids let alone clear the main highway of roadside bombs. So they have turned to job over to Military Police (MP), who act more like southern deputies from the Dukes of Hazard than face-paint darkened commandos who are going to lie in wait all night long to ambush poor Iraqis hired to set up roadside bombs at o-dark-thirty. So each day Americans die along this road threatening the entire mission if the American public gets sick and tired and forces a withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq.

Get out of the cities, strong point the MSR

The Bush Administration needs to order U.S. Army's officers out of their billets inside Iraqi cities and to start living alongside their men in a series of fortified base camps strong-pointing the main 325 km MSR. The Roman Army did this for a thousand years and it can work for us, too. Then, the Army's infantry need to team up with combat engineers to create a new type unit; "Engineer Cavalry" to travel up and down the MSR in hybrid-electric-drive, stealthy, band-tracked, easy-to-maintain light tracked AFVs with Soldiers facing outward with weapons pointed behind a gunshield ready-to-react to the first sign of trouble. After clearing the road for convoys moving supplies in light tracked AFVs in a "Red Ball Express", at night a curfew would be set and the hunter/killer ambushes would set in and wait for any Iraqis foolish enough to challenge us for control of the main road. Make the enemy come to US, fight on our terms not his home turf. This will effectively wrest control of the MSR from the Iraqi malcontents. U.S. Army forces will simultaneously protect themselves at the same time they keep their supply lines open and make it safe for Iraqi commerce.

The following Asia Times article shows there is growing support for a wiser location for U.S. troops in Iraq:

"Logic" of occupation points to more trouble

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - An increasing number of calls by prominent members of Washington's handpicked, 25-member Governing Council in Iraq for the United States to more quickly transfer real power from U.S. occupation authorities are adding to the embarrassment of the Bush administration.

But the calls also reflect real fears by pro-U.S. Iraqis that Washington's occupation of their country represents not only a serious liability to their own political futures in Iraq, but is also the focus of a mounting anger among ordinary Iraqi civilians that apparently is feeding resistance to the occupation.

The latter fear is also shared increasingly by the U.S. military, which is deeply concerned about the impact on morale and discipline among the troops carrying out occupation duties, especially those deployed to the so-called "Sunni Triangle" in central Iraq, where armed resistance to the occupation has been heaviest.

That resistance has fostered increased nervousness - and trigger-happiness - among U.S. troops, who have been responsible for a number of recent incidents in which innocent civilians and other bystanders have been needlessly killed. Such incidents are potentially very costly, as the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, admitted last week.

"We have seen that when we have an incident in the conduct of our operations when we killed an innocent civilian, based on their ethic, their values, their culture, they would seek revenge," he told the Times of London.

His statement confirmed what a growing number of officers and reporters have been saying for many weeks now: the sources of resistance to the U.S. occupation go beyond "[Ba'athist] dead-enders, foreign terrorists and criminal gangs", as Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld described them last week, and that ordinary Iraqis, outraged by the behavior of U.S. troops, are resorting to violence.

In the past two weeks, fatal incidents involving occupying Soldiers have gained more media attention, beginning with the killing by U.S. troops of eight Iraqi policemen and a Jordanian guard on September 12 in Fallujah, the center of resistance since last April, when U.S. troops killed 18 people in two protests there. The latest case arose when the Iraqi police were chasing a vehicle on a main highway and were mistaken by the U.S. troops for assailants.

In a separate incident, U.S. Soldiers mistook celebratory gunfire at a wedding in Fallujah for an attack and killed a 14-year-old boy nearby. Several days later, an Iraqi interpreter for an Italian diplomat working for the Coalition Provisional Authority was killed when a machine gunner aboard a Humvee fired a single shot into a car in which they were riding, apparently because the driver did not respond quickly enough to directions.

Also last week, U.S. Army troops opened fire without warning on an Associated Press reporter and photographer riding in two separate cars marked "press" in Khaldiya, where the police chief had been assassinated a few days earlier.

"As attacks against them continue, U.S. Soldiers are sometimes resorting to deadly force in a reckless and indiscriminate way," said Joe Stork, acting director of the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch (HRW), which investigated the incident.

In a separate incident investigated by HRW, an Iraqi national who works for the New York Times was physically assaulted and thrown to the ground twice by US troops at a military checkpoint set up shortly after an explosion had killed a U.S. Soldier and wounded another.

While no one was killed in the two last incidents, they tend to confirm reports that U.S. troops in key parts of the country are increasingly jumpy, or as described by the driver of one of the AP cars. "The Americans were very nervous and frightened. They are very confused and suspicious of everything."

Those feelings contribute to a dangerous dialectic of their own, according to counter-insurgency specialists, who warn that the more nervous troops become, the less able they are to establish confidence with the people whose trust and cooperation they need in order to carry out their mission.

As one unidentified officer told the Philadelphia Inquirer last week, "Soldiers who have just conducted combat against dark-skinned personnel wearing civilian clothes have difficulty trusting dark-skinned personnel wearing civilian clothes."

Adding to civilian anger, of course, are sweeps carried out by U.S. forces in which scores of people have been rounded up and taken away. Some 6,000 people are currently detained by the military in Iraq; most of them are being held incommunicado.

"The predictable results are an increase in guerrilla recruits, intensified repression by occupation forces and an ever-escalating spiral of violence," according to Richard Rubinstein, a professor of conflict resolution at George Mason University outside Washington.

Even relatively innocent abuses by U.S. troops - such as this week's shooting of a rare Bengal tiger at the Baghdad zoo after it bit an intoxicated Soldier who had reached into its cage to feed it - become symbolic of the alien, not to say boorish, nature of the occupiers and feed anger against them.

This, indeed, is the "logic of occupation" that French officials have warned against and whose warnings, ironically, are now being parroted by members of the Governing Council, including most recently Ahmed Chalabi, the favorite of the neo-conservative hawks in the Pentagon who led the drive to war.

The council, which late last week called for U.S. troops to withdraw from towns and cities to bases and turn over police duties to Iraqi militias and police, has clearly reached the conclusion that the occupation is turning into a disaster.

"The Iraqi people understand the logic of liberation and they reject the logic of occupation," said Chalabi, who has joined other council members in opposing Washington's solicitation of foreign troops to participate in the occupation. The administration is pressing Turkey, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and South Korea to contribute a total of some 40,000 troops to lighten the U.S. load.

But for now, U.S. officials insist that local security forces, including the militias, are not prepared to take on that responsibility. They also suggest that empowering the militias could end up dividing Iraq into regional fiefdoms controlled by warlords, similar to the situation in Afghanistan.

But they are also deeply divided about what to do, with many neo-conservatives arguing for increasing U.S. forces to ensure security and others, such as Rumsfeld, insisting that doing so would not only create new political problems for the administration, but also would risk promoting greater resistance.

Americans out of the streets of Iraqi cities will enable Iraqi commerce to flow again. Let the NGOs do their job without having to look like pawns of the U.S. Army.

Win the hearts and minds: promise that we will leave when job is done: declare a new Dominant Strategic Idea (DSI) of U.S.

Saddam loyalist's DSI: "Overlook we work for Saddam, Americans are invaders"

Iraqi populace DSI: "Who elected you Saddam loyalists? Leave us alone. America, fix what you destroyed, then leave"

U.S. DSI: "We got rid of Saddam for you"

As you can see the American DSI is sorely lacking. We are not winning over converts to our occupation.

New proposed American DSI:

"We got rid of Saddam, we will rebuild you, help us get rid of the last of Saddam, then we will leave"

The American DSI needs to be on leaflets, murals on walls, everywhere. State our friggin intentions. Enlist help of Madison Avenue PR.

Declare martial law at random for entire cities at a time to facilitate the manhunt for Saddam. This means CENTCOM CG goes to President Bush and we end what we started. Bush takes his political lumps or else he ends up with another "Vietnam" and becomes another LBJ.

Keep rebuilding the country, looking for Saddam, don't be an eyesore

U.S. Army Civil Affairs projects to rebuild the country will still occur, but at the end of the day the Americans would return to their fortified base camps. Raids to kick down doors of suspected war criminals could still occur and needs to occur more often but not in vulnerable ways that result in American casualties from ambush. ECAV troops would accompany and transport American raiding parties to protect them from barricades, riots and ambushes, get them to the target area, and back safely using TRACKED ARMORED VEHICLES. This is the lesson from the October 3, 1993 raid in Mogadishu, Somalia: don't fight in city centers with rubber-tired vehicles.

Stop being ashamed of who we are: combat troops

The people who have suggested that the Army was backing off using tracked armored vehicles because they were "overkill" are destitute of wisdom and ignorant of the blunt advice of the Israelis that we must use MORE armored vehicles (LPT, December 2003)...........what are we now into, PR?

Are we still going to use troops in body bags to show that we can take KIAs but don't want to "overwhelm" the population? We apparently learned some of the wrong "lessons" of Vietnam. Whatever "brownie points" we are gaining by stupidly driving around on Clinton-era "gentle peacekeeping" rubber tires in HMMWV, FMTV and Stryker trucks is being lost by living in Iraqi homes/hotels, the palaces of excess paid for by robbing the Iraqi people causing resentment resulting in Americans soon after getting blown up in these vulnerable vehicles. We are neither making the Iraqis love us or fear us.

Its time we go back to the Powell Doctrine.

Last we checked, he was still Secretary of State.

Overwhelming force to kill the Iraqi insurgency, clearly a small group of malcontents not a popular uprising. Think Greece and ETA or Malaya in the 1950s. Let's keep it confined to a small group of malcontents by NOT alienating the Iraqi people by occupying their cities.

By economizing the force securing both our own bases and the MSR at the same time, we create more combat power available to conduct raids. We will not allow repeated attacks in the same areas. We need to turn the heat up on the population in Tikrit and Fallujah. None of these people would shoot more than once at the French Foreign Legion. We must strike back directly and go on the offensive. Sitting in quasi-peacekeeping camps is not the answer. We are doing too much of that now.

Call up the separate and divisional light Brigades and armored cavalry brigades/regiments from the National Guard to help secure the Army's strong points and the MSR. Activate remainder of 82nd Airborne, 10th and 25th Infantry Divisions, send to Iraq after being equipped with M113A3 ECAV light tracked AFVs. Place SFOD-1/CAG "Delta Force" [TF 20] in charge of the manhunt to oust ALL of Saddam's remaining loyalists. Offer amnesty deal if they turn selves in. Leave country, etc. Get PsyOPS on it.

Post giant situation map on wall somewhere. Use MGRS grid squares of entire Iraq. Pushpins where attacks have taken place. Determine patterns. Get intel database of Saddam loyalists. Place covert hunter/killer teams in areas where trouble brews, hunt the hunters. Hackworth's guerrilla bn: www.geocities.com/equipmentshop/guerrillabn.htm

Get REAL 24/7/365 comprehensive, manned air cover over Iraq and the 325 km MSR buy Cessna 182 fixed-wing airplanes with Wren conversion kits that can take-off and land from football field-sized dirt strips since Army helicopters are too noisy, costly and can't be kept flying enough. Then modify the USAF's 2-seat trainer aircraft; the T-37 and T-6 Texan II to fly overhead with pilot and observer with binoculars to fire rockets and radio in suspicious activity. Get a sense of urgency.

We can't simultaneously defend the cities and scour the countryside with the troops we have and keep open the MSR. We must evict ourselves from Iraqi cities as an economy-of-force measure. He who tries to defend everything, defends nothing; that was the lesson we should have learned from the French in the first Indochina-China War 1945-54.

And we cannot continue to have Iraq go on with life as usual. We need to have dawn-to-dusk curfews. The Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, the Pakistanis, and the Saudis could all be supporting this.

Seal the borders with Iran and Syria w/the four ACRs and give them some light infantry and Iraqi police/military in support. All trade comes to one or two check points. All else is considered hostile.

While there are not the 400,000 troops left behind in Vietnam after Henry the K's ceasefire in 1973, we did let about 400,000 Iraqi troops go home. Many of those are well trained and if this was all planned, this could go on for years.

Time to take the gloves back off and finish the war we started and stay out of the Iraqi's civilian lives.

Reform the American Army for the future

The problems we are having in Iraq would not be solved if we had 200,000 troops (more quantity) as long as tactically unwise practices and policies create conditions for failures. More of a bad thing does not equal a good thing. We should implement ECAV troops plan in every Army battalion in every light and heavy division NOW to fix lightfighter's lack of armored mobility/firepower and heavy forces lack of stealth and situational awareness (the real kind coming from the Soldier).

Squeeze out all of these BS HMMWV, FMTV and Stryker trucks from the country. Stop presenting juicy targets to enemy. If you ain't in a track you are walking tactically from cover to cover. No more rubber tires. Get those 13,000 M113 Gavins in war stock over to Iraq where they can be kicking ass and saving our men's lives. Send the HMMWVs, FMTVs and Strykers home. This is a non-linear battlefield. There are no "safe" rear areas, and everyone better start acting like warriors or they will be DEAD.

This means cancelling Stryker armored cars and diverting funds to where they are needed; ie; the ECAV program. FCS scaled back to SMALL R&D program to replace current light, medium, heavy tracked AFVs. Wheeled armored car non-sense declared a farce and ended.

People like Gen Riggs who says they do not care about the physical (read Nov 2003 AFJI quote at end of magazine and top of this web page), whether Army vehicles are wheeled or tracked who foolishly think all that matters is having computers inside should be fired at once. The "shock and awe" of digital firepower ain't workin in Iraq. Its doubtful it ever did; all it appears to have done is destroy Iraqi infrastructure so the USAF would have something for its sexy fighter-bombers to do, now thousands of Iraqis are without water and electricity making them resent the U.S. and potential recruits for attacks on American G.I.s.

Implement Army COMBAT wake-up plan: get everyone's head-in-the-game

This means the wake-up at 5am and do sports PT and then be brain-dead for another 12 hours stopped. Army duty day starts at 0800 in BDUs and ends at 4pm. If you can't get everything done in that time you are doing BS, cut the BS out. If this BS hasn't been identified its time its brought forward and eliminated or those unwilling to get rid of the BS gotten rid of.

Stop talking crap about how you value Soldiers' welfare and other lies. DO IT. Start realizing human beings in combat need to be ALERT or they are going to be DEAD or MAIMED.

Double crews in armored vehicles and helicopters. Stop being macho and brain dead, start being adult and ALERT and CUNNING.

Put sizable amount of troops on NIGHT COMBAT DUTIES (ie; they SLEEP during the day).

Mandatory professional reading program implemented.

Mobile Training Teams (MTTs) will go to every Army post and give them "reality check" of what every weapon does and what counters them or fails to counter them. MTTs will have Soldiers drive every Army vehicle and see what their limits are. Factual experiences not personal prejudices that feed egos.

CTCs like JRTC and NTC will start grading BlueFor on WIN/LOSE not following procedure BS. Units that "WIN" will have their leaders promoted. Following checklists and phony peacetime white glove inspections will not count. What matters is how THE UNIT performs. Leaders will war game first few days at a CTC with OPFOR and FORCED TO CHANGE THEIR BS WARFIGHTING SCHEMES BEFORE DOING THINGS WITH REAL TROOPS/VEHICLES. They will be rewarded with innovation and ability to grasp situation and adapt.

If the U.S. Army fails in Iraq, the Bush Presidency is finished

In conclusion its high time the Bush Administration act on its campaign promises to reform the U.S. military to the best force designs possible for the 21st Century. It needs to begin by facing the truth about the war in Iraq, drop its infatuation with aircraft delivered firepower and reform the U.S. Army into a global deploying, agile 2D/3D maneuver capable force that doesn't need large vulnerable bases in foreign countries to operate from. If the Bush Administration does not fix the Army's handling of Iraq it will be out of a job after the next election.

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OPERATIONAL

Afghanistan and Iraq: Time to Finish the Job

By Roy S. Ardillo II, AMS-SG S2 Intel Officer

"The Paris Agreement of 27 January 1973 marked not the beginning of peace in Vietnam, but instead the beginning of a Communist build-up of supplies and equipment for continued North Vietnamese military aggression in Vietnam. In the ensuing 26 months since the Agreement was signed, North Vietnam rebuilt the Ho Chi Minh Trail into a major all-weather supply artery. They built pipelines extending 330 miles into South Vietnam for movement of their POL. With this major supply system in full operation, they quadrupled their field artillery, greatly increased their anti-aircraft and sent six times as much armor into South Vietnam as they had in January 1973. At the same time, they increased their troop strength by almost 200,000 men. All of these actions were in direct violation of the Paris Agreement. The U.S., by contrast, did not fulfill its obligations to maintain South Vietnamese equipment and materiel levels as they were authorized to do under the Agreement. Ground ammunition declined by 30% from 179 thousand short tons at the cease-fire to 126 thousand short tons when the current NVA offensive began. Shortages of POL and spare parts curtailed operations of the South Vietnamese Air Force by 50%. The historical record outlined above set the stage for the current situation in South Vietnam. This situation is both fluid and fragile. It changed markedly during the month of March and has the potential for further rapid change in the weeks, or even days, immediately ahead."

- Excerpt from a Report written by General Fred C. Weyand, February 4, 1975.

[Editor's note: General Weyand saved the day during the 1968 Tet offensive and took intel reports seriously and had forces ready to protect vital American air bases and the Capital city, Saigon]

Why does it always seem that the American can’t get the job done?

Since Vietnam, we have been perceived as so. Even the great victories of Desert Storm brought discontent as why did we not finish the job. It seems that our civilian leadership has the will and fortitude to get us into a mess, but lacks the same will and fortitude to follow-through the action to a completion.

There are debates amongst the pundits, the politicians, and yes, even among the military as the best courses of action to get to the “light at the end of the tunnel” in Iraq and Afghanistan. The arguments are to keep troops levels down because this is not a long-term operation. If that is so, then why are we planning troop rotations? The arguments are to not increase Army end strength because this is a temporary situation. How can anyone say that with most of the Army either deployed or its units presently refitting? Also, the Turks have balked at supplying about 10,000 troops. The arguments are that land power is "irrelerent" in this day and time. If that is true, whey didn’t Baghdad throw up its hands after "shock and awe" [aircraft firepower bombardments]? Also, if that is true, why are ground troops dying every day of the week keeping Iraq together?

No. The truth is that the military works for the civilians, which is the way it is supposed to work under the Constitution, and those civilians made gross errors in judgment. They did not either follow the advice given to them or only part of it, or the advice and intelligence provided by the Joint Chiefs was faulty, or there could have been a combination. Moreover, as usual, the military members on the ground are suffering. That civilian authority needs to step back and look at what they have created and fix it NOW.

Political recommendations:

Continue rebuilding the country. This will fix most of the problems. The sooner we can fix the infrastructure, we can concentrate all efforts on security, train and Army and Police force and let the Iraqis have their country back.

Move along with the political process including writing a new constitution with the present Iraqi Council.

Do not include the Turks if the majority of the Iraqi Council does not want them. We don’t need another war in the North.

Congress sends the President’s monetary recommendations to pay for the war and for rebuilding.

Rebuild the Iraqi Police Force and arm them.

Rebuild the Iraqi Army quickly and keep their weapons in armories just like our National Guard. Place them on U.S./Iraqi duty.

Pursue economic development so that oil is not the only resource the country can export.

Politically and economically…….if we have to go it alone, we must.

Military:

Quit acting like this is a mop-up "Stability and Support Operation". The mop up is over and it has turned to full-scale 4th Generation War (4GW).

Time to move all the armored cavalry regiments there. Supplement them with light infantry, and Iraqi police and Soldiers (i. e. Katusas). For each regiment, stand up a Vietnam era 1/9th Air Cav Squadron in addition to the Regimental Aviation Squadron making a small air cavalry combat brigade. Use these regiments to seal the borders. Military Police are attached for the MP/infantry check-points. Only border crossings with authorized traffic will not be free fire zones. Of course, Psyops and SF need to get the word out to the locals. SF recruits and trains locals to be part of the Iraqi National Guard. Like the old A-Camp system, this will work at keeping the border areas clean.

The Syrians and Iranians are warned that any guerrilla groups that take refuge on their side of the border will be dealt with. Time to "take off the gloves". The bad guys won’t be allowed to run across the border as they did in Laos, and Cambodia. This also goes for Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.

Move all light and air assault battalions to Iraq from all light divisions and brigades except the 171st Infantry Brigade. The two Stryker Brigades from the 2nd ID and the 25th ID are moved as soon as they can be made ready, use them only in conjunction with MPs as they are extremely vulnerable to all types of enemy fire and land mines/IEDs. Move enough lift and attack aviation from the National Guard to support the light divisions.

Place the brigades of the 1st Cavalry Division and the National Guard 155th armor brigade in support of the four light divisions (7th NG, 10th, 25th, 29th NG).

Take war stocks of M113 Gavins and have them issue enough '113s for the light infantry to ride around and have back up firepower. No fancy crap. Just '113s with .50s and .30s [7.62mm] with gunshields. We ain’t got time to staff it through 27 departments.

All convoys have a '113 in the front, one in the middle and one at the back. Also, the MP ASV wheeled vehicle can be included since it can continue to escort the convoy until they clear the ambush area while the M113s move into the front and flanks. I agree that all trucks should have .50s. Fake convoys, baits and traps, should be used. Get the false intel out that a big convoy is coming up the road. Keep ‘em guessing. Deception planning as part of the OPLAN seems to have gone out of style.

Also, need reconnaissance assets to look at the MTI along the roads at night. Hopefully, the technology is such that we can conduct raids on some of those in real time. Staying behind the berm lines afraid to move into the bush is why we lost in Vietnam. Orbit AC-130S and A-10s.

Patrolling is also the key. LRSUs, from the MI Battalions and Brigades, should be able to go into the country-side to see what is really up. Scout platoons from the battalions can be combined into ad-hoc cavalry troops.

While at first, I did not feel this was like Vietnam, but it is in one way. While there is not large army left in the South as in Vietnam, there are still guerillas and there continue to have large numbers of trained Iraqi veterans. We can talk about this not being concerted effort, but I do not see it that way. I see a war that is ripe for development with lines of communications between the Iranians and their Shiite guerillas and Syrians and their Ba'thist guerillas.

While it may have not started that way, I would bet by now there is a network. The Chinese connection to Iran and the Russian connection to Syria makes this dicey.

Editor's note: Roy S. Ardillo, II is an excellent intelligence analyst. He was in U.S. Army Intelligence as a SSG from 1971-1981.

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TECHNOTACTICAL

Are we killing our Soldiers?

Parts 4 & 5: Time to return to COMBAT training focus

By LPT Staff Analysis

From last month:

*If unit is on lawn care building maintenance duty, then the entire unit and the training day should be spent on this time distracter so it gets done as fast as possible and then attention focused back on combat training and missions.

What is the task, condition, standard and METL number for COMMON SENSE?

The unit SMEs will have they do their jobs at the "cutting edge", be training techniques that are valid and relevant to the actual battlefield threats facing them. However, we must wake up to the fact that it takes at least 2 years and $100,000 to write a new Army Field Manual with tasks, conditions, standards and "approved" reference numbers. If we become so narrow minded that we cannot train Soldiers on the necessary tactics, techniques and procedures to stay alive because we have to wait for a TRADOC approved FM and task number we will continue to be out-thought and out-fought by the enemy. By the way, what is task condition standard for lawn mowing?

If we can mow lawns without ARTEPs and METLS then we can train on adaptive TTP without waiting on the bureaucracy to bless off on it. The way it should work is that the unit SOP is the resting place for the new TTP, the SMEs within the unit as much as possible cross-reference the SOPs to be professionally sound and safe but not be so anal that something new and improved cannot be added. We must be able to IMPROVE on what we do not just be forced to abide by a mediocre low standard. This should be "common sense". The unit commander will have to respond to everything his unit does or fails to do anyway, to include the unit SOP. Unit SOPs should be sent to respective TRADOC offices to ENLIGHTEN THEM not the other way around.

Part 4: Battlefield Reality Check Needed: HQDA must put money into relevant training events shared by all Soldiers

One-week Battle Reality Laboratory solves NKSS

The Army needs tough, realistic, smart, tactically sound COMBAT training for its young leaders so they can all be able to do a "Hal Moore" if called upon and win a basic dismounted small unit infantry fight. TO BUILD TEAMS of Soldiers, not peer-evaluation back-stabbers like a "Survivor" reality TV show, but TEAMWORK. Let's do something special during basic training that can only be done when all the new Soldiers are together. Let's have them receive a physical "reality check" of what the modern battlefield is like and how the Combined Arms, not just Infantry branch, work together to prevail on that battlefield, wherever it may appear. We need warrior instruction, not another "harassment package" done by Infantry School cadre beating new Soldiers over their heads that "they ain't Infantry". They already know that. They need to know the "U.S. Army" on their uniform means they are branch immaterial warriors who kick the enemy's butt wherever they meet. Lets call the program "Objective Warfighting Laboratory" or "OWL" as in to make one wise like an owl.

The Army should immediately give every deploying unit at least 1 week of OWL training, and then every other unit as soon as possible to give them the reality check they need.

Make the Training Count

OWL should be the place where every U.S. Army Soldier gets a real, no nonsense, "reality check" of what modern combat is like PHYSICALLY. OWL should give him/her a bedrock, independent understanding of the battlefield that will follow them for the rest of their careers, not a Hollywood or computer simulation fantasy. This means students need to shoot every small arms weapon in the Army arsenal, blow things up, drive wheeled and tracked vehicles to find out where they can go and not go (to prevent mistakes like the LAV-III armored car from being bought in the future). They need to understand how to load aircraft and ships. They need to do TASKS that stand on their own merit and have their own intrinsic validity and worth, so when graduates go to their units, they can say: "I've done that". Today's Army Soldier is often completely out of touch with basic battlefield reality. Ask many of them how much a 5-ton truck weighs, and most will answer "5 tons," when the reality is the truck weighs 22,000 pounds and 5-tons is its CARGO CAPACITY. Many Army Soldiers are clueless about the modern battlefield, because they were never taught the true, basic physical reality of everything at any time in their careers. The Army itself does not encourage thinking to get an accurate understanding of the battlefield. When does the Army Soldier ever study the battlefield and become a professional? Army Soldiers need an intense laboratory where no one is breathing down their necks to get the instruction, mentoring and actual hands-on training needed, so they can fully get a grip on what modern land combat is all about. They need to get their "heads into the game" early, and start the lifetime of study and preparation that a TRUE WARRIOR does to be a true, not make-believe, professional.

Why is a PHYSICAL warfighting "reality check" vital?

Let's not kid ourselves.

We live in an American society today that exalts the mental via computers over the physical; hence this nagging paranoia that we are not "tough enough" that creates the endless harassment packages. Instead of trying to pour physicality down everyone's throats, why don't we figure out WHY American Soldiers are not physically oriented and create a way they get physically connected to reality. Then Soldiers will derive understanding and motivation from their own internal self-direction, not under useless harassment sessions? It's fairly obvious that Soldiers in the past understood mechanical advantage better in the 50s/60s than they do today. This is why computers are added to inferior mobility platforms (LAV-III Stryker rubber-tired armored cars). It's a sickness of today that people ignore physical reality. A Vietnam-blooded combat officer writes:

"We grew up in an age of nuts and bolts (at least, speaking for myself). Hobbies for us were building model airplanes, ships and tanks out of plastic that had to be glued, painted and arranged in dioramas.

Later we (I) graduated to U-control model planes and trying to learn what makes little engines go. In high school, we learned all we could about cars, pretending to understand stuff about high and low ratio rear ends, compression and blowers. We were into fixing stuff with not much help from anybody else; hell, all the adults were busy earning a living, but they would help you if you asked. Besides, we could go and do about anything and not get into too much trouble.

By the time I went through Basic, I knew a lot about engines, but mostly how to make mechanical stuff 'work'. We read stuff about cars and motorcycles and just plain wanted to be cool and drive. In those days you could buy a very used car that still ran for under $100. In fact, I bought a '49 Chevy in 1969 in Ft Worth for $35. I had won $40 in a pistol match and offered it to the owner, but she talked me down.

Anyway, today's kids (my son is a great example) are computer genies. Hell, he scares me because he thinks so fast. Trouble is, he doesn't know mechanicals, at least not much. I derided him about it for a while, so he bought an '86 Chrysler with a broken engine, and another one with running engine, and surprised me by completing the swap. I was duly impressed that it actually ran. So I can't hammer him too much, but he still is better with electrons.

Consider Star Trek.

None of those people work with real tools. It's a fact. They have metal stuff, but you never see it being formed. They have glass and steel, rubber and plastic, but all you see is electronic "readers" that analyze. Even the phasers don't seem to have any working parts. I love Alfred Hitchcock's comment: 'Why do we need to worry about death rays when bullets are so efficient?' Who does the 'real' work in space? Where are the welders and riveters? Does a machine make the liquid metal into a space ship without human help? What is the interface between electrons and physics?

AND where are all the 'dumb' people? You know, brick layers, pipefitters, tree trimmers, truck drivers, the ones liberals ignore until their car breaks, or their septic tank backs up? The future is full of 'brilliant' officers and no workers or drones.

Well, how do our modern Gen Xers work? From the seat of their pants. 'Butt time' is the common expression for work these days.

Don't get me wrong, I am not throwing a blanket over the whole crowd of this Generation 'X', but when I go to hot rod or motor cycle rallies, I don't see a lot of the younger bunch there. There are some, but not as many kids grow up now getting their jollies building engines and busting their knuckles.

They are more likely to have matured blowing speakers, getting RSI from playing Gameboys, and putting 200 watt amps in their cars than chopping, channeling, boring and porting.

Are they dumb? Hell, no. Are they lazy? No, but they sure are misguided in the amount of work it takes to accomplish something physically like digging a foxhole, filling in a latrine, or even making a box out of wood. Most of them have never taken shop; it's not a 'needed course'.

What these guys need is some motivation to accomplish in mechanical areas, and some guidance on how. They also need educators to stop looking down on people who know how to work with their hands. In fact, they need to praise these folks, for without them we'd be finished.

When I was working on my masters in history, someone in the class complained about the work load. I made a smart remark back about how much easier this was than when I had been an undergrad in Wofford (where?). I was now at Rollins, and it's supposed to have a big reputation. I told them I was working as a mechanic on Saturdays, coaching swimming in the morning and teaching summer school between classes. They acted like I was a freak. That was in 1971. It might as well have been in 1917. I look at the curriculum of today and it's about tenth grade work from 1965".

War is a life or death physical activity. To be good at it, we have to "turn back the clock" culturally and mentally, regardless of what civilian society is doing, and create a physical and smart warrior ethos in the U.S. Army that will endure because it's internalized by every U.S. Army Soldier, not just officers. To do this, we have to change people positively, forever, and to do this for real, we need to CONVINCE them to internally change from the inside. Convincing means showing, teaching and proving what you say is true, not yelling at them to "shut up and do what you are told, because I am over you and you must obey". The former is a WWII desperation draftee culture mentality that results in not being able to trust men with live ammo because you have made them resentful robots, easily outsmarted by thinking humans who blow up marine barracks in Lebanon, and cripple a USS Cole in Yemen, not a professional warrior ethos. Convincing means you must show Soldiers WHY they need to do certain things, which requires more effort and resources than simply running Soldiers around yelling at them during PT and do walks in the woods with rucks, which doesn't take much. Anyone can put on a ruck and self-harass themselves any time they want, or go work out in a gym. We can and should do this on our own. Big deal. This doesn't create smart warriors, who are going to know what to do against deadly and cunning enemies, like in the mountains of Afghanistan. It's feel-good sports PT nonsense. Knowing WHAT TO DO means reading books like "The Bear Trap" and "Street Without Joy" to get your head in the game. It means doing physical Army tasks that have RELEVENCE to the modern battlefield, like ruck marching with actual live ammunition loads, actual weapons (AT4s, LAWs, Grenades) up and down mountains and hills, then dropping rucksacks and doing a live-fire exercise. Discovering that a rucksack in training should not be filled with troop comfort gear when it's going to carry ammo in combat. Then having a REAL critique, not the current politically correct AAR (where problems and solutions are not ironed-out and then acted upon). After the AAR is done, use video footage from both your friendly force and OPFOR's view point, then go back to the "drawing board" after realizing we were moving way too slow, then determining ways to lighten rucks, or moving them, or cacheing them so we do better.

A THINKING Warrior Ethos.

A Warrior Ethos that is "on the ball", ALERT, "rolls up its sleeves" (not RHIP) and actually tries to win and finds ways to win using EVERYBODY'S INPUTS, not make spin for higher headquarters and politicians. At company-level, there should be a "No Excuses Zone," where unvarnished physical and mental realities are faced and overcome by everyone. Just like it's done all across America in every full-contact high school football team trying to WIN and not get paralyzed from the neck down. These teams employ more "plays" and "battle drills" and individual participant inter-action than the modern U.S. Army does, which is a disgrace that must stop.

Soldiers need to see WHY they need to sandbag vehicles, WHY they must use overhead cover. They need to see actual combat footage of gunshot and burn wounds. They need to see the problems and their solutions.

Why?

Because they have not been shot at in actual war, and it's too late to learn once they are. We need to show them everything we can about the modern battlefield safely. And we can't do this if we are wasting time with nonsensical harassment package games re-creating OCS/ROTC/West Point to make them submit to their inferior social place in the Army's "pecking order" of rank, badges and ego. And after we give them a "reality check," we need to let them think and have an opinion about what they have seen and done, not this self-defeating groupthink where we try to make everyone think like the commander thinks. Achieving the Commander's intent is NOT demanding that everyone be a clone of his personality and requires a multitude of thinking types so plans/actions are "what iffed" so problems can be anticipated and countered. Our goal for the young warriors should be the end result, not the school approved means. The question should be: was the mission accomplished? AARs are used to point out better ways to accomplish the mission, then let the students practice them. The OWL objective is THINKING LEADERS who have the tools to observe, analyze, decide and act in stressful situations.

What to change?

I realize that some at Infantry School may want a (BOLC) "Bowl Lick" harassment package to conduct an as easy as possible 7-week diploma mill to run 3,000 or so 2LTs through each year to gain money, power and prestige for Fort Benning. Fine, I like Ft. Benning, too. But Ft. Benning should be a first-class place of INNOVATION and excellence as it was when George C. Marshall was running the place and getting the U.S. Army ready for WWII. Ft. Benning should not be a harassment package to perpetuate Army-style political correctness. Frankly, from what I see of the BOLC curriculum, we should throw it all out and start over with creative and combat-oriented instruction. We understand that drawing up 7 weeks of challenging reality with lots of pyro, weapons firing and combat tasks will cost more $ but that's life at the pointed end of the bayonet. This should be about making the U.S. ARMY more combat capable, not soaking up more money for Ft. Benning as it runs a cheapo-harassment package. If all we are going to do is waste $$ recreating ROTC Phase II, rather than make it a combat reality check, we should cancel the whole BOLC thing.

Suggested POI for OWL

I suggest the following ideas for course content. They are neither all-encompassing nor carved in stone. It's a starting place for professionals of all ranks/branches to consider what junior leaders need to know about protecting their troops in serious social encounters of the guerilla kind. We suggest probably using platoon-sized classes to do some instruction, with bleacher/ auditorium time for general information on a subject. The entire OWL POI should be online for Soldiers to come ready to do it for real; an example is this National Guard EIB web site:

www.geocities.com/eib2010

Week 1: Grasp of The Modern Battlefield

Watch excerpts from Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, and We Were Soldiers, focusing on the combat actions and the planning before the actions, range firing of all U.S./Soviet infantry weapons at targets with Soldiers checking their targets to see effects of fire and countermeasures. Indirect fire, C4 demolitions, field fortifications, engineering wire, basic dismounted infantry formations, RTO procedures, moving in patrol formations, U.S. weapons familiarization (assembly/disassembly, cleaning, immediate action drills). Load helicopters. Each officer selects a tactical military professional book to read and do a book report and oral presentation at the end of the course:

www.geocities.com/equipmentshop/probooks.htm

Encourage OWL Soldiers to talk to each other to share ideas and get a better feel for life at the dirt level. Use a buddy system to help the more mechanically and/or firearms challenged get a better understanding of reality.

Objective Warfighting Laboratory Week 1

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Direct Fire	Indirect Fire	Engineering	Movement	Ground	Helo	Fixed-wing
DAY
5 x "E" targets In Open tree Camouflaged truck hulk Sandbags sandbag Dug-in steel beam In truck hulk rubber tires	5 x "E" targets In Open tree Camouflaged truck hulk Sandbags sandbag Dug-in steel beam In truck hulk rubber tires	Make Defensive Fighting positions, Overhead Cover barbed wire Concertina wire	12-mile ruckmarch w/live ammo loads tac mvnt to: MOUT site	X-country Wheels Tracks Vehicle Sandbagging	FRIES	Load C-130
Small Arms 9mm 5.56mm 7.62mm 12.7mm (.50cal)	Grenade Launchers 40mm M203 & MK19	Claymore AP mines			sling-load	463L pallet
Rockets 66mm M72 83/84mm RAAWS/M136	Mortars 60mm 81mm 120mm	Molotov cocktails Smoke pots			internal load	airdrop bundle
	Artillery 105mm 155mm	C4 non-explosive charges			troops	vehicles
					Air Asslt FTX	Air Delivery FTX
		Life-fire IMT against Defensive positions previously made		Force-on-Force LFX w/simunition @ MOUT site
NIGHT
No illum With Illum		Night defense live-fire	NVD patrolling	Night MOUT F/F
With NVDs With IR illum

Walk-in access, indoor Shooting RANGE on EVERY Army Post

To sustain the OWL battlefield reality check, Soldiers must shoot at the least EVERY MONTH if not every week. The current weapons ranges on Army posts are too complicated to get since you have to fight with every other unit on post to secure them, resulting in the reality that most units shoot only once a year, why are we then surprised that debacles like the Jessica Lynch convoy in Iraq takes place? We also know that vehicle mounted weapons firing don't happen because we know entire Army units are missing their crew-served weapons and the mounts to attavch them to their FMTV and HMMWV trucks. Every unit should have vehicle-mounted weapons and have an annual live-fire qualification of those mounted weapons by the Soldiers who will use them in combat.

To solve these problems I propose that we build on every Army post a large indoor range with fixed lanes out to at least 100 meters with targets on an overhead trolley so no one goes forward until the range is closed at the day's end. Ask Congress for construction funds to build these ranges so we can save friendly lives and kill the enemy in combat. This way only a 1-2 person staff would be needed to keep the range accessible. Units can bring ANY of their weapons (except M203 and MK19 40mm grenade launchers with high indirect trajectories) and ammunition to shoot. This is unscheduled, first come, first serve. The Walk-in Range would enable units qualify on pistols and rifles using paper targets using the "B" modified technique. Soldiers with their own weapons would also be able to come in and fire. Its all good.

Its apparent that when units go to the range to qualify that despite the best efforts of shooting SMEs that there are a handful of Soldiers who simply cannot qualify without a major retrain driven by WHAT WAS DISCOVERED DURING THE LIVE-FIRE. The walk-in range would allow unqualified Soldiers to go the very next day for one-on-one coaching to fix their shooting technique problems and qualify.

Camp MacKall FOB set-up for Ft Bragg units to do combat 8s and 72s get away from barracks BS

A veteran Army NCO writes:

"With the current state of the Army (deployments/drawdown Army) there are far fewer troops to do the missions than from what I can remember from the 1980s period. Of course we were not deployed constantly back then but had frequent training missions. Our equipment and Soldiers were flexed and used in rigorous field training exercises at least one to two weeks per month. We came back from these missions confident in our equipment and ourselves. After the training exercises we would enthusiastically clean and PMCS our equipment, then take time off to relax between training events. We were connected to our equipment and our leaders. In 2003 we do not get to train effectively. Soldiers spend time in garrison pulling details and half-way PMCSing their equipment(to properly do this you must use your equipment as in field training exercises). Discontent with Army life, due to lack of interest, is because of the unrealistic simulated training environment.

Sergeants time training is a waste of time. It has become one serious "dog and pony" show. We do outlines, slides, presentations and classroom instruction. Not very realistic. I say, get the Soldiers out of garrison and into the field. Give them time off when they return, then repeat the process. We are mostly just tired of all the Bull Shit. Including the awful daily garrison schedule."

In the 172nd Arctic Brigade every month featured a 3-day war where everyone did a dry run rehearsal of a war. Every Army post should have a training area to tap into for a 3-day war FTX--a "Combat-72" to practice what we preach and put everything we have into operation. This training area should be a mock Forward Operating Base (FOB) complete with airfield and fighting positions so Soldiers can act like they've just deployed to a hostile area. For at least 3 days the men will then fight force-on-force against a local OPFOR, staying away from the "flag pole" where senior NCOs/officers/staffs tend to bore the hell out of them with garrison and micro-managing BS details centered around buildings and outward appearances. At Fort Bragg, I suggest turning nearby Camp MacKall into the mini-JRTC maneuver training center for the XVIII Airborne Corps units. Support units would do "Combat-144s" to back up two combat arms unit combat-72 rotations to get enough "action" for them to gain the edge they need.

Summary/Conclusion

What we need is the following:

1. An 0800 to 1600 standard work day to restore 6-10 hours sleep for every Soldier

2. Combat physical training (PT) at day's end in BDUs not sports attire

3. PT test should be 6 mile ruck march in BDUs for time not current sports test

4. Everyone pitches in and finishes lawn care/barracks details in one day

5. Training schedules/events created by BEST MINDS in unit per subject matter

6. Battlefield "reality check" of weapons effects, vehicle capabilities given to every Soldier in Army

7. Walk-in, use-without-complications, indoor ranges and plentiful ammo supply on every Army post for Soldiers to shoot constantly to gain higher skill levels

8. "How to Fight" DVDs from Center for Army Lessons Learned given and shown regularly to every Soldier in Army

9. A Simulated FOB training area on every Army post to conduct mini-CTC FTXs

10. Army values upgraded to L-E-A-D-E-R-S-H-I-P to instil ENTHUSIASM, ALERTNESS, HUMILITY and INITIATIVE/INNOVATION as cultural values.

We anticipate a bunch of ill-intentioned feedback to these articles from those who do not want to change things for the better and/or who are guilty parties to the current LCD brain-dead status quo. America's needs an effective Army capable of geostrategic decisive maneuver, that can out-think and outfight the enemy...we can't do this at the basic daily Soldier level if our Army is run by power hungry, snobby, inflexible tyrannical dumb-asses. Col. Gregory Belenky, lead sleep researcher at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C. says warfighters who deprive themselves of sleep can cause missions to fail. "Historically, battles are won and lost at the small unit level, squads and platoons, and because of the interaction between individuals within squads and between squads...You can have a brilliant plan, but unless you have intelligent execution at the lowest level, it won't work," The Army must change its culture to a virtuous egalitarian thinking organization where such petty careerist tyrants (think Sobel in Band of Brothers; Massengale in Once an Eagle) are not allowed to gain control of daily events. If we cannot control daily reality to make it good, how can we control the weeks, months, years and the future?

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Professional Military Education Hot Link

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In light of the impending Stryker armored car debacle in Iraq, Land Power Transformation suggests reading the Depuy Institute publication on the historical record of Lighter Armored Vehicles:

www.dupuyinstitute.org/pdf/mwa-2lightarmor.pdf

Got bad Soldier gear? U.S. bureaucracy not listening?

Post your gear requests/ideas to Brigade Quartermasters, they will get good gear to the good guys (YOU)

www.actiongear.com/bbactiongear2/main.asp

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