The Top 40

Our problem in Afghanistan? We"ve been fighting this war on the cheap. You never fight a war on the cheap.

My nephew finishing up his AIT at Sill has been put on deployment status. He had leave scheduled for June. Say goodbye to all that.

He's a cannon cocker (well, missile man, actually) so probably won't get issued an optic on his carbine.

Know anyone who would buy a nice 1916 matching Swedish Mauser, their choice Mosin variant, and a nice Savage two - line SMLE? I need to buy a holosight... quick.

Supporting the troops is not just a saying. If Gerard will forward you my e-mail (i don't want to post it publically) I'm pretty sure you will be able to get what you are looking for.

Roger -

My post was ill thought; this is Mr. V's place, not a want ad bulletin board.

I'll put my items up on our local radio classifieds and they'll be gone within the week. I've already got the optic on order locally.

No problem. I was just trying to help. I need more guns like America needs bigger government. Tell your boy we're all behind him and to keep his eyes open and his head down. Best wishes.

William T. Sherman and Curtis LeMay both knew how to fight a fanatical enemy and win. Everyone knows we have enough firepower to vaporize any number of continents and we convince ourselves that not even Sept 11 justified more than dropping soldiers with battle rattle into a backward country and hoping for the best.

Our enemy's ideology is perfectly suited for swift and terrible defeat at our hands and we choose to play for a tied outcome that might happen sometimes in the next century. Allah has told them to surrender when their enemy is too terrible to be defeated. We are afraid some pederast goat herder might not like us if we aren't very careful.

Perhaps we're applying the wrong lessons from Vietnam. Time to quit fighting the last war.

The tried-and-true method for containing and controlling places like Afghanistan or Somalia is to pick out the 2 or 3 most powerful warlords in the region and buy them. Offer them huge (by their standards) amounts of money to bring the situation you want conrolled under control by whatever means they deem necessary. And always have 2 or 3 replacement warlords waiting in the wings.

What scory said. Either that or get all Roman on them and create a desert and call it peace.

I'm still behind the bullets dipped in bacon grease and burying the enemy dead wrapped in pig skins so that they cannot get into paradise(they would be unclean). Theoretically, this will remove any motivational factor of martyrdom. This will most likely have one of two effects, either they will go all crazy and attack in outrage, which will make our soldiers job much quicker by providing an abundance of identifiable targets, or they will just pack up their camels and go back to killing each other, which will make our soldiers job much easier. This has the added benefit of making FLOTUS happy, because there won't be as many pork rinds on the market.