Argghhh!

You've just landed on the wrong runway, 3 miles east of your intended one. OK, so it was 0200L when you landed. You were tired. It happens.

The future is now... Of course, it has the same drawback as Patriot - it's a point-defense system. The kill of the target means that the intended target of the "kill" isn't hit - but that armed-and-still-full-of-explosive warhead is going to head to earth ballistically, where it will detonate or become an UXO hazard. It's not going to hit what it was aimed at - but it will hit something. Like a warehouse, full of troops, perhaps, for those who remember Gulf War I. Not an argument...

It's not unusual in wartime for the Medal of Honor to be presented by someone other than the President. Well, not unusual for Korea and earlier. For Vietnam-era awards and later, it's pretty much been a Presidential moment. Except for one. Navy Captain William McGonagle, who earned his Medal of Honor 8 June, 1967. Captain McGonagle received his Medal from the Secretary of the Navy in a little noted ceremony at the Washington Navy Yard. On the official US government website for the Medal of...

Here ya go.

For those of you who buy into the revisionist historian's view that Truman didn't order use of The Bomb because of projected casualties, but rather that that reasoning was a postwar fiction developed to hide the truth and cover the guilt, I offer this rather dry read: D. M. Giangreco, “Casualty Projections for the U.S. Invasions of Japan, 1945-1946: Planning and Policy Implications” in Journal of Military History, 61 (July 1997): 521-82, online at: http://theamericanpresident...

Bullets zinging by your head don't sound like much, do they? Until you realize what they are... Helmet Cam combat video. This is not a Hollywood production. You can tell. It's mostly boring, interspersed with gallons of adrenaline....

Apropos the discussion we've been having on the photo of Lance Corporal Bernard. Wrapped up in the response to the publication of that picture are several issues, which are often conflated, and which make a coherent discussion of the picture difficult, as those issues strike at some very basic values.Below is a post from MaryAnn at Soldier's Angels Germany, and posted her with permission. Anti-Afghan Forces detonate a rocket on a convoy in Afghanistan with children in the immediate area....

...to having your Natal Anniversary on February 29th.Among the advantages are 1. having all your friends actually *remember* your birthday and2. not being saddled with leftover birthday cake for three out of every four years.Among the *dis*advantages are 1. having all your friends actually remember your birthday and2. then blabbing to the nearest blogger that you need to be celebrated 3. even if it's an off-year and it ain't actually, *technically*, your birthday.Soooo, sorta-kinda Birthday...