War News off the Template

So taking care of active military continues to reward in so many ways. Most don't want to be sick.... Almost no one demands a refill of oxycontin or percocet, and many thank me. Some bring me presents... a unit T shirt.... a campaign coin. It has been SO worth the cut in pay and increase in hours over the freak show of the ER. I'm not going back.

Many of these fine young men and women are wearing black steel bracelets in remembrance of fallen comrades though the Marines, if you can believe it, are not allowed to wear them anymore. Marines? WTF?

So there is a growing field across the services, the field of the surveillance aircraft operator (UAV or now the "UAS".... unmanned aerial system), and these men and women have stories. Try this one for example.

A young woman was flying her remotely piloted aircraft over a town over in the war zone and saw a crowd of people running. This usually means, she explained, a group of insurgents massing for an attack, but she noticed no weapons on these people so she panned-back and out and saw that they were RUNNING FROM insurgents who were, she could plainly see, going door-to-door and executing people unlucky enough to have remained in their homes.

The murderers were run down to a man as it's hard to hide from an invisible camera in the sky directing aircraft and infantry right to where your sorry ass is running, but this is only part of the story.

The town in question was then garrisoned by infantry who occupied one of the homes where a family had been murdered.

A few days later a Vehicle Borne IED drove up to this house and killed most of the American infantry. They ID'ed the driver, and this particular UAV operator was amazed over the next few days to see an endless parade of townsfolk to the home of the 'martyred' bomber bringing flowers, gifts, and food. It, evidently, was quite a
wonderful event in this little town.

And this is the war the left wants. The one we SHOULD have been fighting from the beginning. You know, the one where our troops are at a disadvantage due to terrain, caves, towering mountains and such.

How WESTERN to want to WIN a war. How "Bush-y" to force them to fight in the open with little cover in Iraq.

Afghanistan... Not on my "must see" list, and, evidently, a place where life will remain cheap and squalid. It's Bush's fault.