I missed Simo Hayha's birthday this past Thursday. Hayha is probably the deadliest sniper in the history of modern warfare, having killed over 500 Russians with his Mosin/Nagant M/28 - over iron sights, because he felt using a scope carried too much risk of exposure. He then went on to kill another 200 Russians with his Suomi submachine gun. At the age of 34. Under weather conditions that could be charitably described as "appalling". More details at Mitch Berg's joint.
Hayha is one big reason why this mopo is so true:

Probably the best short description of this movie would be Full Metal Jacket Goes to The Gulf. I read the book some years ago but never quite got around to seeing the movie until last night. The movie is pretty faithful to the book, which is a good thing since I liked the book; the changes made to the book didn't strike me as terribly important. Jamie Foxx does a surprisingly good job as S/Sgt Sikes, and Gyllenhaal's portrayal of Tony Swofford is also very good; very understated but at the same time convincing in the scenes where he's freaking out.
I probably won't buy a copy for myself, but I do recommend it.

Awesome video of Marines getting down to the music. Keep an eye on the Latino (Asian?) Marine dancing in front of the barracks doors with the taped windows - he does stuff I would have sworn was just not possible. Hats off to the Corps and to the editor of this vid.


(Jules Crittenden - RTWT and donate if you can.)

Saved by medics, helo crew, operating room staff and EODs with enormous brass balls.
Video is extremely bloody in parts.



(Small Dead Animals)

More info here about the most decorated officer of the Third Reich. Dude blew up a battleship, FFS.
My father used to talk about how a Lufthansa pilot bought him rounds until closing time while lecturing him on the greatness of Oberst Rudel after Dad name-dropped the author of Stuka Pilot. On the other hand, Rudel was an unrepentant Nazi, so it's not like the guy was some kind of stainless hero. On the gripping hand, the folks who designed the A-10 Warthog consulted heavily with Rudel, and we all know how that went. :)

John Miller of National Review pens a gorgeous little essay on the life of Bruce Catton. Catton, obviously, is one of my favorite historians, and I think is responsible not only for the shift in military history from generals and admirals to privates and seamen, but also for the spread of "popular" military history - the stuff written not as a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation, but to inform and amuse the public. Catton and others like him (for example, Samuel Eliot Morison and S.L.A. Marshall) are the reason that military history is thriving even though academia has turned up its nose at the subject. People want heroes.

Ladies and gentlemen, the XM-25 grenade launcher: the first weapon in history to put variable-time fuzes in the hands of the squad grenadier, thus denying the enemy the advantage of cover. (Ace, which helpfully includes a Top Ten Cool Facts about the XM-25 list.)

Or, how to land an F-16 with a spinal injury. (Maggie's Farm)

Anyone who claims there are no more heroes isn't paying attention.

UPDATE & BUMP: They're not all in uniform, either. (Instapundit)

Went down to Accountemps and lucked out by finding an empty two hours free space on Diagonal Street around the corner from their office. Got paperwork brought up to date, talked with a staffer for about ten minutes, then headed back home. Hopefully they'll get me some work tomorrow and/or Monday.

Freshly bookmarked: Closing Velocity, a blog dedicated to missile defense. I've been a fan of BMD since the 1960s, when it was politically incorrect before PC was cool on account of the Mutual Assured Destruction orthodoxy, and this blog satisfies my need for information on the topic.

In line with the old Mafia saying that "the fish rots from the head", Obama's administration seems to be taking its military direction from the pages of the Onion.

Keying off this post in haikujaguar's LJ - which turns out not to be about Hammer's Slammers or other SF mercenaries, except for a brief mention of using Mr. Drake's book as a palate cleanser. I want to talk a little bit about mercenaries in SF, particularly the two best known series while I was growing up: David Drake's Hammer's Slammers, and Gordon Dickson's Dorsai.

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I can't do a better job summarizing this than Ace, so imma make with the cut & paste & blockquote:

Will Hollywood ever make a heroic movie about Iraq? Probably not.

But the Japanese have. Trouble is -- this being Japan -- it stars animated bunnies fighting terrorist cats.

Ladies and gentlemen of the f-list: Apocalypse Meow.

Navy to give Congressman John Murtha the highest public service award for non-employees. Even after his disgraceful public comments on the Marines accused of the "Haditha massacre"*, to say nothing of his repeated attempts to undercut and defund Marines in Iraq. Strange way to interpret Semper Fidelis, I'd say. At any rate, veterans and others whose sympathies are with the Corps are signing a petition to rescind the award. Go here to do the same.


*At this point, seven of the eight accused Marines have been acquitted and LTC Jeffrey Chessani's court-martial has been suspended due to command interference, i.e. pressure to make sure he was convicted.
(Instapundit)

The Imperial March played on what looks like a mutant Van De Graaf generator. (Ace)

"Even Maureen Dowd is goofing on Teleprompter Jesus." Worth it for the photoshop alone.

Think we dodged a bullet by not electing Sarah Palin VP? How's that working out for you?
Includes link to Jon Stewart ripping Obama for the utterly retarded "make vets pay for their own combat injuries" plan.
(Ace)

Related: Milblogger COB6 calls for General Shinseki (now head of the VA, for those of you scoring at home) to resign in protest. (Ace)
Also,

Oh, look! Fannie Mae execs are getting bonuses too! Just like AIG! No wonder the politicians are doing the backpedal. Can it be time for Chuck Grassley to open his belly nao? (Instapundit)

Speaking of Jon Stewart, guess who's got a Wall Street connection in the family? Pot, meet kettle. (Instapundit)

On a less vitriolic note, the Other McCain hands out useful advice to bloggers and other writers*, and informs us that Miss Virginia is shaving her head for cancer. More amusement -including a really filthy joke at the expense of David Brooks- at his blog.

*Aside from his awesome guide to getting a million hits on your blog, of course.

(h/t Iowahawk, who has a serious post about the human cost of the environmentalist movement. Thanks a lot, Rachel Carson.)

The Speaker and the Pope: How it might have gone. The Ford F650 XUV: Just the thing for the zombie apocalypse. Also, Libertarianism not welcomed by Conservatives in the UK. (The Corner)

Elsewhere, Michael Goldfarb slaps the New York Times for getting catty about Politico's business model. Quoted FTW: "Exit question: which newspaper's business model consists of handouts from a shady Mexican oligarch, a tapped-out credit line, and a new mortgage on their office space. Hint: It's not Politico."

Awesome profile of Colonel Cesar Rodriguez in The Atlantic by Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down), which includes a solid military & economic reason for fully funding the F-22 Raptor. Of course, the problem with deterrence is that it's hard to prove that nobody wants to pick a fight because your pilots and planes are so superior they might as well just become an hero before even suiting up to take off.

Taking the first step in proving to those morons in Fairfax County that I don't live in their bailiwick (no matter what the DMV says) set me back $10 today when i got my driver's license corrected. I have a good mind to send the fuckers an invoice for this, and sue them in small claims court if they don't pay up.

P will be pleased to hear that there's a sequel to Cyteen out. The library also had a copy of Flint & DeMarce's 1635: The Dreeson Incident and The Sayings of Chairman Bill (Buckley, not Gates). Speaking of the late WFB, I see that the library appears to have the complete set of Blackford Oakes novels. I should take a look at the later novels; having been enthused by Saving the Queen, I was promptly turned off by the much darker Stained Glass and never went back. Well, we shall see. For now, it's time to get ready for the night job.

Israel also has a problem with respect to a cultural separation between the political elites and the military, growing out of Labor's turn away from Zionism toward secularism while the majority of Israelis remain observant and Zionist. Catherine Glick of the Jerusalem Post has an interesting essay on the increasing religiosity of the IDF, why it bothers the Labor & Kadima politicians, and what they're doing about it. (Via Jerry Pournelle, who comments: "Beware the fury of the Legions". )

Anyone who thinks the French experience in the Thirty Years War is relevant to the war in Afghanistan, and that Michael Yon is a right-wing propagandist, is seriously retarded and should go ahead and piss their pants. That way, they'll know how it feels to win an argument on the intertubes. I'm done arguing with this particular idiot, but I'm sure more will come along presently.

John Hinderaker points out some pretty amazing ignorance on the part of the New York Times. How the hell can you not know (or even look up to make sure) that Bulgaria is in the Balkans and not in the Baltic???

As a veteran and a Catholic, I've been putting up with this kind of ignorance for years, and it makes me very cynical and dismissive when journalists start nattering about "professionalism", "ethics", and all the other crap that they claim distinguishes them from "guys in pajamas" blogging away on the Internets. They just get too much wrong too often that just happens to coincide with their prejudices, or that doesn't seem of much importance to them. I'll never forget, for example, a network news clip during the Chechnya war that showed a Russian BTR-60. The BTR-60 is a six-wheeled armored personnel carrier with (at most) a heavy machine gun mounted in its top turret, but the blow-dried fool reading the news blithely described it as a "tank". :facepalm:

These are things that are easy to look up before you go on national TV and expose yourself as an ignorant douche. Business, not so much, which is why the Wall Street Journal is turning a profit while the rest of the newspaper business is whining all the way to the tar pits - they hire reporters who are actually smart enough to understand what goes on in a business. Unfortunately, the WSJ is an exception; in most newspapers, just about the only experts are to be found in the sports section. And I'm not talking about the columnists.

chocol8fiend was absolutely right about Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts - where most books are tolerable brain candy, this is fine cheesecake.
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