Liberal Talk Radio

For the first time in decades, the 82nd Airborne no longer has a brigade on ready alert: FORT POLK, La., March 14 — For decades, the Army has kept a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division on round-the-clock alert, poised to respond to a crisis anywhere in 18 to 72 hours. Today, the so-called ready [...]

Maybe Princeton is closing its parapsychology lab, but the U.S. Navy’s Marine Mammals program is alive and well … and finally coming to Washington. Dozens of dolphins and sea lions trained to detect and apprehend waterborne attackers could be sent to patrol a military base in Washington state, the Navy said Monday. In a notice [...]

There are some things in life that are merely stupid. Then there are things that that are so stupid they make me want to run, screaming, in terror for the future of our species. Before I post my little quote, just keep in mind two things. 1) Iran (according to our dimwit president anyway) is [...]

God bless Gregg Easterbrook. I was just the other day — JUST THE OTHER DAY! — ruminating on the fact that the Navy doesn’t name carriers after Democratic presidents.  Now comes Easterbrook’s latest Tuesday Morning Quarterback: Next, the Cruiser Mark Foley : The Navy just announced its next supercarrier will be the Gerald Ford. The [...]

Keith Olbermann helpfully pointed out last night that the “surge” of troops the President proposed this week will actually be the fifth such increase since the war began, and will actually be fewer total troops than we’ve had at their height: [T]he reality is that Mr. Bush‘s current escalation will still result in fewer troops [...]

Found (via Slate link) this great article recounting the difficulties faced by Army medical teams in Iraq, and the organizational structure they’ve developed in response to those challenges. Here’s the tale of how one severe casualty was (successfully) treated: One airman with devastating injuries from a mortar attack outside Balad on September 11, 2004, was [...]

I’ve beem meaning to write about this for a few days now, but I got sidelined by illness (still pretty sidelined, btw, but up for a blog post every now and then!). Some think that you can separate the Bush Sr. (aka Bush 43) and Bush Jr. (aka Bush 41) administrations neatly into “realists” vs. [...]

We divert your attention from your regularly scheduled (Iraq) programming to bring you this little incident of the Chinese trying to be Russian. A Chinese submarine stalked a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in the Pacific last month and surfaced within firing range of its torpedoes and missiles before being detected [I know, I know, [...]

Bush on TV now. Wow, Rummy is stepping down. Robert Gates to replace him. Member of Baker-Hamilton commission. Crazy. Not military man, which is interesting. Is Bush looking to basically throw the fate of Iraq on the commission. Bush also says we need to “change the tone” in Washington and get past the Red-Blue divide. [...]

So the Army Times publishes an editorial calling for Rumsfeld to step down. This, predictably, gets a ton of attention in the national media. But you’ve got to love the GOP pushback on this one. They’re alleging that the Army Times is owned by Gannett Newspapers, and therefore is just another “liberal media” outlet. Talking [...]