Religious right wingnuts American Family Association are attempting to get the military to stop selling Playboy and Penthouse wherever fine reading material is sold on bases.
By law, most skin mags can’t be sold in military stores. Playboy and Penthouse aren’t deemed scandalous enough to fall under those regulations, though.
When I was in Air Force technical […]

What You Missed If You Didn’t Read Today’s NYTimes

No need to worry about poor and elderly minorities being disenfranchised by new Voter ID laws. They’re disenfranchised by death before it becomes a problem, according to the Bush administration’s civil rights czar.
The Marines get fashion conscious.
The Maine Middle School Contraceptive Controversy: “It brings home the fact […]

Oops:

The Army, Navy and Air Force unwittingly advertised for recruits on a website for gays, who are barred from military service if they are open about their sexual orientation.
When informed Tuesday by USA TODAY that they were advertising on GLEE.com, a networking website for gay professionals, recruiters expressed surprise and said they […]

What You Missed If You Didn’t Read Today’s NYTimes

Black women in South Carolina are afraid to vote for Barack Obama because he might be assassinated.

Russian President Vladimir Putin. Oh, what a character.We have this: “We cannot build Russia’s future by tying its many millions of citizens to just one person or group of people,” he […]

[Hotel Tango: The D-Ring]

Great column by John Noonan at The Daily Standard:
FOR NEARLY 200 years, cadets at the United States Military Academy have been guided by the “Thayer System,” a rigid structure of unyielding regulation, austere discipline, fierce loyalty, and strong emphasis on math, science, and engineering. The method is calculated to produce Army officers of the highest […]

Now this is what I’m talkin’ ’bout.
Great guest post over at The Gunner’s World by Col. Michael Visconage explaining the role of field historians. He then goes into the current situation in Iraq, from his unique perspective.
My job as the Multi-National Corps Iraq Historian is to collect as much data for the military archives as […]

I’m going to post select excerpts from this article in today’s The New York Times that I think display the heart of COIN operations and the changes happening in the Sunni-populated areas outside of Baghdad. The article, of course, has some sour notes, but I think the overall conclusion is fairly optimistic.
Capt. Ben Richards had […]

The Los Angeles Times:
The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government’s capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns.
More than 180,000 civilians — including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis — are working […]

From The Wall Street Journal:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and some allies in the Bush administration are seeking to build bipartisan political support for a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq by moving toward withdrawing significant numbers of troops from Iraq by the end of President Bush’s term.
The complicating factor is how long the administration will […]