Lede of the Day

[John Noonan]

US Soldier Refuses to fight in "Illegal Iraq War"

Matthis Chiroux is the kind of young American US military recruiters love.

"I was from a poor, white family from the south, and I did badly in school," the now 24-year-old told AFP.

Yeah, I salivate at the prospect of stupid troops too.

Alternate: Matthis Chiroux is the kind of young American than US media reporters love...

Ask the Candidates

[Andi]

Do you have a question about "military and veteran issues" that you'd like to pose to the Presidential candidates? Here's your chance:

Take part in this historic, online debate over military and veteran issues. You could be one of the 12 people chosen by our editors to have your question directly answered by Obama, Clinton and McCain. This is your chance to ask the candidates about the most important issues in the military community.

Click here to submit your video questions.

Yeah, Life Might Have Been Easier When There Were No Cell Phones

[Chap]

Mom listens to son complaining, gets a little bent out of shape...

We, as a society, are failures.

[Chuck]

Chuck has a post up about American Idol as an indicator of societal values.

He begins with
"So, I've had to sit through another episode of the odious Idol program that Carren likes. (I watch, I comment, she rolls her eyes, claims I love it, but fun ends for me after try outs.)

They did a retrospective where the 16-year-old David Archuletta returns home to Utidaho (either Utah or Idaho, I don't remember). He goes to his high school, his local mall, and a couple other local places where people come out of the woodwork to squeal his name and get frenzied up in the best post-modern-beatle-esque prepubescent panty twisting since the British invasion."

And gets worse from there. He does, however, sum it up nicely.

McMaster on Iran

[CDR Salamander]

I think he makes it clear.

Iran has been directing assassination operations in Iraq using trained snipers, in some cases killing Iraqi officials opposed to Iran, according to an officer who has recently served as a senior adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Army Col. H.R. McMaster, who has served multiple tours in Iraq, yesterday described Iran's activities as part of an unofficial talk on the evolution of the Iraq war he delivered at the American Enterprise Institute here. Although he emphasized that "Iraq's communities have largely stopped shooting at each other" and that the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq "is on its way to defeat," he said Iraq remains a "weak state," and that Iranian involvement was intended to keep it so.

Iran's activities are "obvious to anyone who bothers to look into it," and should no longer be "alleged," he said in response to a question.

Last passenger off

[Major John]

Wanna see a couple of minutes of my last helo flight? I had PLENTY of time to take a film clip... see what I mean here. Heh heh.

Mystery Blogs Engage in Heated Debate

[Greyhawk]

The Wall Street Journal:

The Pentagon says it isn't formally considering a change in policy at this point, but Mr. Gates's comments sparked a heated debate on military blogs, message boards and email lists.

That caught me by surprise - I rarely discover something "military blogs" are engaged in "heated debate" on via the Wall Street Journal - usually I hear of the debate on actual military blogs first (and I never see those debates migrate to the mainsteam media).

So I checked the invaluable blog search engine technorati, in hopes of discovering these military blogs I hadn't discovered yet. To my surprise, I found the only citations of this particular topic were from blogs referencing this Wall Street Journal article - I could find none that preceded it, and couldn't find any milblogs among those that followed.

But I suppose that "military blogs" offering "heated debate" on a topic somehow validate it as significant, so the line appears in the article.

*****

By the way, here's the topic:

Centuries before Iraq and Afghanistan, George Washington created the Purple Heart to honor troops wounded in combat.

But with an increasing number of troops being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, the modern military is debating an idea Gen. Washington never considered -- awarding one of the nation's top military citations to veterans with psychological wounds, not just physical ones.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates offered cautious support for such a change on a trip to a military base in Texas this month.

"It's an interesting idea," Mr. Gates said in response to a question. "I think it is clearly something that needs to be looked at."

The Pentagon says it isn't formally considering a change in policy at this point, but Mr. Gates's comments sparked a heated debate on military blogs, message boards and email lists. The dispute reflects a broader question roiling the military: Can psychological traumas, no matter how debilitating, be considered equivalent to dismembering physical wounds?

Supporters of awarding the Purple Heart to veterans with PTSD believe the move would reduce the stigma that surrounds the disorder and spur more soldiers and Marines to seek help without fear of limiting their careers.

For my part I say PTSD is real, and this idea is real bad. And as for Gates' "cautious support ", I interpret a response of "that's an interesting suggestion - we'll look into it" as being senior milspeak for "no".

As for "stigma" - like the heated military blog debate and Gates' "cautious support", I believe its more a figment of an over eager (but possibly well-intentioned) reporter's imagination. (Actually, there's more to it than that, but this should get things started. We'll check for "heat" in the comments later...)

Wish I'd said That

[Greyhawk]

Michael Barone:

Unfortunately—and here Feith is critical of his ultimate boss, George W. Bush—the administration allowed its critics to frame the issue around the fact that stockpiles of weapons weren't found. Here we see at work the liberal fallacy, apparent in debates on gun control, that weapons are the problem, rather than the people with the capability and will to use them to kill others. The fact that millions of law-abiding Americans have guns is not a problem; the problem is that criminals can get them and have the will to kill others. Similarly, the fact that France has WMDs is not a problem; the fact that Saddam Hussein had the capability to produce WMDs and the will to use them against us was.

I will say it explains my own position before the fall of Baghdad (and unchanged since):

Saddam Hussein is a weapon of mass destruction. Okay? But only as the head of a government. Get a grip, get a clue. We are doing what's right.

Iraq could manufacture WMD. We know this. Suppose they stopped for a while and destroyed all their stores. What stops them from rebuilding their supply?

...but Barone certainly says it better than I did.

And another "tune in"

[Greyhawk]

JD Johannes of Outside the Wire will be a guest on the Dennis Miller radio program today.