A cut in pay leads to murder

The Afghan soldier who gunned down nine Americans in a shooting rampage at a military compound in Kabul last April targeted and killed his U.S. mentors after they took away his wings and cut his salary nearly in half because he was unable to learn English, a longtime colleague of the killer has told FoxNews.com.
A second Afghan airman, who was wounded in the April 27 attack, says the gunman, Col. Ahmed Gul, also intended to kill Afghans who were working with the Americans at the base at Kabul Airport. And he said he fears there will be more incidents like it as the war winds down.

Read more: www.foxnews.com/us/2012/01/26/exclusive-flunked-english-class-pay-cut-behind-afghans-shooting-rampage-at-us/#ixzz1kbHdWHGG

I can’t say this is much different from Americans. We hear all the time about fired disgruntled workers who go back into the workplace and gun down their managers, co-workers, etc.

What is surprising in this whole thing is that the Air Force just released their Special Investigation report into this incident and there was no mention of the cut in pay or flying status. Why would that be? It could be that none of it is true, or that it is but the Air Force for some reason is hiding that fact or did not want to make that known for some politically correct reason.

I would say that if this were true, it would be a prime motive of why COL Gul decided to murder. I would hope that the Air Force is not trying to hide this in order to hide the fact that as we mentor and train Afghans to do their jobs and secure their own country that we would and should be holding them accountable and thereby punishing them when needed.

I don’t mean to sound all conspiracy theorist here but lets just say I have seen more than my fair share of covering up of Afghan inadequacies and shortfalls by US military and civilian leadership.

Photo Courtesy of www.bigstockphoto.com

Jon Stewart’s lack of PT helps the troops

Picked this up on militarytimes.com blog outside the wire. I watched this episode last night as I DVR every Jon Stewart and Colbert show and try to keep up with them.

Even though he is a self-admitted liberal, Jon Stewart is a big troop supporter having went over to the sandbox himself at least once that I know of and has hosted the last two Remind.org For The Troops fundraising comedy events.

This time it is funny to see his inability to stay in shape help the troops.

BTW this does have some foul language and may not be safe for work or around little kids.

The Daily Show
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I love it when they kill each other

I saw this over at my good friends and fellow milbloggers site, http://thisainthell.us/blog/

It is just too funny not to watch a couple of times. They ask a good question over at TAH, “Why is this war taking so long?”

Banana Republic Stores honoring our military, but HURRY!

SPREAD THE WORD!!

Banana Republic stores are doing a little something to honor our military and give them a break on clothes. If you are a military member, retired, veteran, or a military family member they are giving you 50% off of up to three full-price items through Sunday, January 22nd. Sorry for the late notice but tomorrow is the last day.

After that they are giving the same folks 15% off all items from January 23-31.

Please check out bananarepublic.gap.com/browse/info.do?cid=76923&mlink=5001,4470740,21&clink=4470740 to learn more.

Spread the word, tell your friends, family, family readiness groups and units about this awesome deal

Reacting to Contact

Soldiers from Company C, 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, survey the ridgeline after taking in sniper fire from an insurgent during Operation Diamond Head in Afghanistan, July 29.

Photo courtesy of US Army’s 2011 year in Photos

This is why the French are considered wussies

France suspended its training operations in Afghanistan and threatened to withdraw its entire force from the country early, after an Afghan wearing an army uniform shot and killed four French troops Friday and wounded others.

So after two of their soldiers are killed by Afghan security forces the French are ready to pack it in and go home. Are they that shallow and weak that it only takes that to get them to quit? No wonder they got rolled over by the Nazis so quickly.

Now I bet if Afghanistan had their oil like Libya did they would be willing to stick around a little bit longer.

These are the same allies that when they are in trouble that they come begging to us to help them out. We need to learn when to say NO!

Is the National Guard back to being 2nd rate soldiers again?

Prior to 9/11 the National Guard was looked down upon by Active Duty forces. Since I served half my career in both both services I can tell you some of that was earned and some was just ignorance by active duty forces. When I was active duty we never took the National Guard (or as we sometimes called them “Nasty Guard, “No-Gos”, or “Nasty Girls” ) seriously. They never trained as hard as us, had as good equipment as us, or were as disciplined and professional soldiers as us.

However that was while I was active and I only had limited visibility of the National Guard and well, that visibility was not always good. Once I came into the National Guard I found there were many professional and technically expert soldiers who called the National Guard home. I have served with some awesome and highly motivated soldiers in the National Guard and I have also seen some pieces of crap (both soldiers and leaders). However I had also sen plenty of bad soldiers when I was active duty too.

After 9/11 the game changed, the “weekend warrior” was dead once our op-tempo kicked into high gear overseas while we also took on many new unforseen homeland security responsibilities. In 2003 my company deployed to NYC 3 times with two times having less than 12 hours notice. Think about that for a second. One day my soldiers left their campuses, cubicles, work-places, etc. thinking they were going home for the night and would be back the next day only to get a phone call telling them to bring any gear they had from home and report to the armory. I remember being on a bus to NYC handing my cell phone to soldiers so they could tell their bosses they would not be in to work and were not sure when they would be back. In addition to those homeland deployments, we also went to Germany for 3 weeks to help train up an active duty Brigade for an Iraq deployment and we were alerted 4-5 times ourselves for deployment. The last alert in November of 2003 finally came to fruition and most of the company deployed in January 2004. Continue reading →