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 […]

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 […]

Just pilfering stuff all damn day:

Quentin’s Monologue from ‘Sleep With Me’

Originally written by Roger Avary
What’s a film about, what’s it really about? What genre does it take?[Duane: What, like the spine? Like one sentence?]No, I don’t, fucking boy meets girl, I don’t give a shit about that. Fuck boy meets girl, fuck motorcycle movie. No, […]

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 […]

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 […]

I’m just going to lift John’s entire post on OP-FOR regarding a piece posted today by Gen. David Kilcullen, Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser, Multi-National Force–Iraq, on the Small Wars Journal Blog:

Via Small Wars Journal:
I’ve spent much of the last six weeks out on the ground, working with Iraqi and U.S. combat units, civilian reconstruction teams, Iraqi […]

The inimitable Noah Shachtman has been collecting the best military recruiting ads (scroll down) from around the world on Wired’s national security blog, Danger Room.
The ads, of course, focus on what the military can do for you — money, guns and babes — and what you can do for them — dance, sing and throw […]

The major offensives (Phantom Thunder, Arrowhead Ripper, et cetera) in Iraq continue today. The Washington Post has a story here that’s okay. I’m assuming it’s rather hard to find and report “both sides” of the story when the subject is changing so quickly — that is to say, I’m not certain that all the “naysaying” […]

Thank God for PBS. I watched FRONTLINE’s “Endgame” last night on their Web site. If you want to know how we ended up where we are in Iraq, and the new strategy that’s being employed by Gen. Petraeus and American forces in-country, you have to watch this. In fact, it should be required viewing for […]