4 Mile Creek

Last Post to 4MC

Three years and 1537 posts later, I say goodbye. 
To the readers of 4 Mile Creek, I say thank you, it has been a fun time and I appreciate that you have taken a few minutes of your day to read my ramblings.  And thank you for your support during my time in OIF.
It is now time for me to concentrate on other endeavors.   

I like this post.  Especially this:

When I pay my taxes every year, I comfort myself with the fact that a good portion of it will go towards killing people I don't particularly care for. To me, it's the one real job of the federal government. All the things liberals think are so important -- health care, welfare, regulations -- are things humanity has survived without for thousands of years, but national defense has been around since one tribe didn't like how another tribe was encroaching upon their hunting ground. I don't believe, though, that liberals even understand why we have a military these days. They think it's just something they have to fund to get Republicans to support their social programs.

Of course a much larger portion of everyone's taxes goes towards social programs than goes towards killing people Frank J doesn't care for, but that's a republic for ya.  Having been a CO2 coordinator (yep, imagine that!) in several of my units, I'm perfectly cognizant of the fact that liberals do think of the military as a big social program for their ill-considered efforts. 
Anyway, I'm glad someone else understands that the military is designed, funded, trained, and deployed to kill people and break things.  We don't often need to do that; but when we do, I'm glad that there are non-military types like Frank J that understand. 
That's probably why a statue of a "peace dove" wouldn't really grasp the essence of a military hero for most of us.

General Mistake

Just how much does the AP reporter in Iraq gets out and about?  Not much. 
This story talks about the fight going on south of Baghdad, in the Iraqi Army 8th Infantry Division's AO.  The CG of the 8th IA is Major General Oothman Farhood al-Ghanemi.  The reporter refers to him as General al-Ghanemi, or just al-Ghanemi.  Anyone who has spent even a few minutes with arab forces knows that the proper reference to them is rank and first name.  In other words, General Oothman, whom I have met, is referred to, and prefers to be addressed as, General Oothman.  Not General al-Ghanemi.  He wouldn't even know who you were referring to if you called him General al-Ghanemi.  It would be like callling General Petraeus, "General al-Greenzone".  This reporter should know that, and would, if he ever got out of the Palestine Hotel.   When a reporter makes a mistake like this, common enough, it's a pretty good indication that the reporter has never spoken with the person he's writing about, in this case Gen Oothman.  The General would have never let him make that mistake, he's too much of a headline hog. 
The Arabs referred to me as Ra'eed Diggs.  I liked it. 

Al Sadr for Congress

Al Sadr gives new meaning to the phrase "I'm behind you all the way!" 
In his case, way, way behind.  Like in another country. 
He "supports" his troops like the Democrats "support" US troops. 

BRAC Parks

It may be hard to believe, but some of the most underdeveloped land within major metropolitan areas, or within a few hours drive of those areas, are old Army posts.  The most prominent of these old posts is the Presidio of San Francisco, stuck in the middle of the city of San Francisco.  This post was scheduled to closed in the first BRAC, and irony of ironies, the environmentalists sued to keep the Army from relinquishing control of the post because they knew that the land, turned over to the city or state of California as designed by the BRAC, would be sold to developers.  The several thousand acres of underdeveloped land would be worth billions of dollars to a developer.  Instead, the federal government kept the land, transferred it to the National Park Service, and under a fairly complex set of rules, the Presidio has become a huge asset to San Francisco.  The Presidio and hundreds of other old posts dotting the US have been saved from development while the rest of the areas outside of the posts have become suburban or even urban, leaving really cool islands of nature within our midsts. 
Much like the Presidio, the  Rocky Mountain Arsenal, once home to millions of gallons of toxic chemical weapons, is now a National Wildlife Refuge within the confines of greater Denver.  Free-ranging buffalo herds are starting to emerge in some of the last native prairie grasslands in the US.    
Further east, in the state of New York, at the old Seneca Army Depot, there is a herd of very rare white deer.   Because of the fence around the depot, designed to keep people out, the deer within the depot were genetically separated from the whitetail deer outside the fence, and the recessive gene for white fur has been allowed to come to the forefront.  These are not albino deer, which would have pink eyes and pink noses.  They are normal deer except for the white coat.  These deer Seneca are the largest population of white deer in the world, and if managed correctly, can become a point of ecotourism in an area that has very little ecotourism previously.
There were a lot of arguments about the BRAC process and its impact on the military when it was first introduced as a way to cut costs for the maintenance of the military infrastructure in light of the end of the Cold War.  Many opponents of the BRAC process were worried that the closing of some of the smaller posts would have enormous negative economic impact on the towns around them.  Some of that has come true, I'm sure.  The town just outside of Fort Devens, MA, was about ready to dry up and blow away when I was stationed there as one of the last units.  But it seems that there was very little recognition of the fact that many Army posts had unique properties that could not be found elsewhere.  Large tracts of land had been put aside with the idea that they would be valuable in the case of a large WWII like expansion of the military, and these lands had remained mostly people-free.  On posts like Aberdeen and Seneca, there were actual areas fenced-in that had huge signs warning any trespassers, civilian and military alike, that deadly force was authorized should you stray past the fence.   Deer, eagle and wild turkeys passed through without challenge.
The last BRAC in 2005 recommended the closure of some bases that should be pretty cool to see turned into park lands.  NAS Brunswick (Maine) and NAS Oceana (Virginia),  Galena FOL (Alaska) to name a few.  It would be interesting to see what the overall environmental and economic impacts of these closures, of all the BRAC closures, will be in twenty years, and compare them with what was predicted back in the mid-90s. 

First Amendment Arson

Just how stupid are the students at Yale?  Stupid enough for some of them to believe that a Pakistani-born student setting an American flag on fire is a college prank and not a political statement.

Sam Massie ’09 said he does not think the arson should be seen as a political.

“In setting fire to the flag, they were endangering house, so I don’t see this as a political thing,” he said. “The fact that the students have foreign-sounding names and that they are three Yale students makes for a sensational story, but it doesn’t bring up any interesting issues."

Well, okay, maybe it's true that Sam Massie never watches the news, reads a newspaper, or opens a book on world events and has no idea that burning the American flag is a time honored tradition of islamists worldwide wanting to show "politcal thing".  So these students like Sam Massie are either stupid, uninformed of the world at large, or so intoned with anti-American rhetoric at Yale that a flag burning really is just a college prank. 
Either way bodes ill for Yale. 

Four Years Too Late

You gotta know Hillary is kicking herself for not running in 2004.  She would have easily beaten George Bush.  The only reason Bush beat Kerry is because it's not hard to defeat such a pretentious douchebag. 

Let's Build a Peace Dove!

Commenting on the Dietz statue controversy, Ann Levy of Denver, who calls herself a "peacenik," would like to see Dietz's sacrifice honored in a different way.       

"They should be putting up a peace dove instead," she said. "The question is do we stand for peace or do we stand for war?"       

A "peace dove".  I guess a peace dove statue would be appropriate if a peacenik ever did something for America besides burn and shit on an American flag.  What a complete fucktard.   The question for Ann Levy, asshat peacenik, should be: "Do you stand for freedom, the kind that Danny Dietz protected with his life, or are you willing to buy a burqa for you and your daughters now?  By the way, since you have brought shame to your family by talking to reporter Joey Bunch, a man not related to you, prepare to be murdered in order to protect your family's honor.  Bitch."
Peaceniks.  What they don't understand about the world would fill a book. 
The Q'ran, say. 

Party Like It's 1995

Heh, the NYTs is trying to show why the impending budget fight is not going to go for the President like the budget fight in 1995 went for Clinton.  Grasping at straws is the phrase that comes to mind. 
We'll certainly see, won't we?

The Convenient Lies of An Inconvenient Truth

Military briefings are done in accordance with fairly strict rules.  For a reason.  One of the "rules" is that in a decision brief you list both the facts and the assumptions up front, right after giving the background on the problem (note: you rarely need a decision if there isn't an underlying problem).  The reason you do this is because decision makers don't need their time wasted sitting through a bunch of PPT slides on what the solution should be if they don't agree with your assumptions!  When the decision maker doesn't agree with your assumptions, the briefing usually ends right then and there, and you are sent back to your office to get the right information before presenting the brief again. 
Let me give you an example.  When GEN Petraeus was getting briefed up on the plan for the Baghdad "surge", if someone had listed as an assumption that Iran will end their involvement in Iraq by April '07 due to UN pressure, the brief would likely have ended right then, with GEN Petraeus telling the briefer to go back and correct that assumption.  Any course of action about to be briefed to the CG based on that assumption would be ridiculous, as the UN is completely ineffectual in getting Iran to do anything at all.  That's why you list the assumptions up front.  If your assumptions are wrong, the rest of the brief is useless, and doesn't need to be briefed. 
Why do I bring this up?
Because when you hear someone say that most scientists agree that life on earth is threatened by global warming, that information is incomplete unless you know what those scientist believe are the facts and assumptions about global warming.  This is very significant because most of those scientists are not climatologists, and they are basing their predictions on the facts and assumptions that are presented to them by the climatologists.  Those scientists; economists, biologists, social scientists, population movement experts, etc, are dependent upon the climatologists to have an agreed upon set of facts and assumptions that they can use to put into their models.  So when you hear that an economist, for example, states that life is threatened because of global warming fueled economic disaster, you have to know how they got to that conclusion.  If the assumption that the economist used is the Goricle assumption of 20 foot sea level rise in the next 20 years instead of the 11 to 17 inches of rise in the next 100 years as predicted by the UN then of course the economist's prediction will be much more dire.  But if you believe the UN over the Goricle (I know, tough choice) then the "expert" opinion of the economic scientist is useless.   In fact, every single news report that states all the scientists agree on the dangers of global warmmongering is useless unless you know what the facts and assumptions were used by the scientists in coming up with that agreement. 
Keep that in mind when you hear how many scientists agree we are on the eve of destruction.  I personally would agree that we are doomed as a planet and species if I agree with the assumption that there is a fifteen mile wide asteroid heading straight for Earth and it will hit us next week.  Given that assumption, 100% of scientists would agree that we are doomed, along with about 99% of humanity.  If the foundation of the global warmmongering scientists is the convenient lies of An Inconvenient Truth, then you can expect that they will all agree we are doomed.  However if don't agree with the assumption that a huge asteroid is about to crash into us, then 100% agreement among scientists is quite useless, isn't it?
Thank God we aren't all starting from the same set of facts and assumptions.  For some of us, one big assumption is that the Earth is more complex than even brainiac Al Gore can understand.  Another assumption would be that if Gore doesn't believe his own global warmmongering bullshit, we probably shouldn't either.  For some of us the facts are that scientists predicted world starvation before the year 2000, that scientists predicted disastrous global cooling in the 70s, that since 1947 scientists predicted that nuclear annihilation was only minutes away, and that scientists predicted a population bomb overwhelming the earth's resources by the turn of the century...all proven completely and utterly ludicrous.  One needs to know the input before you can know how to assess the resultant output.