While Hezbollah paid veiled – or muhajjabat –supporters $15 per day for attending the demonstration, those who agreed to go unveiled were paid a little over $33 or 50,000 LL.
Dr. Hilal Khashan, professor of political studies at the American University of Beirut (AUB), suspected that this unique privileging of unveiled women by a party that encourages the wearing of the hijab among its women followers was because it “wanted [them] to look like Christians.” The appearance of unveiled women would have helped make the protest look like a national movement rather than a sectarian one.
The overall winners ranged from a workout guide to an app for disaster relief efforts that allows the user to search, create and edit maps using Google Earth. But in terms of battlefield utility, the most important app may be “Sigacts” program for the iPhone. It lets a soldier tap into the Army’s futuristic command post software (called, I’m not kidding, “Command Post of the Future“) and learn about bombings and firefights in his area..
I think I speak for all Marines when I say one simple truth: I despise MOL.
In all honesty, I sort of wonder how the Corps functioned before MOL. It seems like everything we do revolves around what gets updated on this anciently designed website. If it doesn’t happen on MOL, it didn’t happen. In reality though, MOL is a great device for keeping the Marine Corps interconnected in every aspect, keeping the admin side of things available to the average grunt is a wonderful idea.
The worst part about MOL isn’t the system itself though, it’s just how dated the website really is. It feels like some relic of the 90′s, back when the internet was shiny and new in all it’s 56k glory, and email and Facebook weren’t requirements for daily functioning. The password system being the worst part of it all. How many times have you forgotten your MOL password? I know I have just about every time I use it. Really, there’s only so many different combinations of characters I can think of that actually contain the ridiculous password requirements to access the site. Even if the requirements weren’t as stiff as they were, the fact that it makes you change your password every week adds tremendously to the problem.Seriously, as evidence that this system is stuck in the 90s, just consider that the network is called "MOL".
Walk. Stop by, don't drive by. Patrol on foot whenever possible and engage the population. Take off your sunglasses. Situational awareness can only be gained by interacting face-to-face, not separated by ballistic glass or Oakleys.
I am in a room with 35 soldiers. The one first in front of me is glassy-eyed, staring into the middle distance, and I have to raise my voice to get his attention. Wilson, what are you doing here?Although Koch received a rebuttal from Brigadier General Gary Cheek, the Commanding General of the US Army's Warrior Transition Command, it's worth noting that Brig. Gen. Cheek actually acknowledged that drug abuse was, indeed, a problem within the WTUs (see the comment section).
"I'm schizophrenic, sir." How old are you? "Nineteen, sir." You haven't been downrange, have you, son? "No, sir."
Smith, why are you here? "I'm bi-polar, sir." How old are you? "Twenty, sir." Have you deployed? "No, sir." Same glassy-eyed look....
...About the glassy-eyed look? Here's a snapshot from another WTU session. A visibly agitated soldier tells me, "A lot of times I run out of my meds when the dispensary is closed and I can't get a refill when I need it."
I ask him what he is taking, and he tells me Percocet. I ask him how many he takes that he can't time his refills with the dispensary schedule. He says he has a jar of the stuff that he takes when he needs it. This turns out to be a common problem, and an uncontrollable one in the WTUs.
In Vietnam the enemy turned our war fighters into drug addicts. Today, their caregivers are doing it.
[Soldiers in the WTUs] can be considered at-risk – almost all Soldiers in WTUs populate one or more of the outer rings in the “Army Population at Risk” maze shown in Figure 12. The prevalence of illicit drug use in WTUs is illustrative of this risk. Illicit drug use during FY 2009 within the seven WTUs surveyed for this report were 2.9 times the FY 2009 overall Army average; of the 5,385 WTU Warriors tested for drugs, 4.8% were positive, compared to the overall Army average of 1.67%.Additional links: Elisabeth Bumiller reports at the New York Times.
The prescription of opiate, antidepressant and anti-anxiety drugs is an important aspect of treatment provided to WTU Soldiers. The use of these medications is legitimate when they are taken in compliance with medical direction. When these drugs are used illicitly, however, Army policy requires that offenders be referred for counseling and disciplinary action as appropriate. The enforcement of these standards has been made problematic because of inadequate detection systems. The high number of WTU Soldiers on medication compounds this problem and increases the opportunities for abuse.
There are three key gaps in Army policy with regard to detecting potential prescription drug abuse. First, the Medical Review Officer (MRO) will excuse a positive urinalysis for a drug if the Soldier has a prescription for the drug, regardless of the date of prescription. Data surveyed from seven WTUs indicated that the MRO “clearance rate” (the percentage of excused positive tests) for Warriors was 90% during CY 2009. Second, levels of drugs found by urinalysis tests do not utilize specific concentrations other than to confirm the existence of the drug. This is important because it prevents the MRO from determining if the Soldier was using the drug for therapeutic reasons, since the samples of substance abusers would reveal much higher levels. Finally, the percentage of Soldiers in WTUs that are actually tested is unknown, which prevents an accurate determination of the magnitude of the drug problem.
WTU leadership recognized these issues and took several affirmative steps to combat prescription drug abuse; including limiting the length and quantity of medication dispensed per prescription and requiring that Warriors receive their prescriptions from a single provider. While these measures serve to mitigate the problem, the gaps in detection systems “mask” the full extent of potential illicit prescription drug use in WTUs. Current data cannot show prescription drug abuse of Soldiers who have expired prescriptions for the drug or are taking the drug in excess of prescribed amounts. The effects of these detection gaps, together with the failure to test any Soldiers in a significant portion of WTUs, prevent WTU Commanders from effectively managing their at-risk populations.
About six-in-ten Pakistanis (59%) see the U.S. as an enemy of their country, down slightly from 64% in 2009. Only 11% now consider the U.S. a partner and 16% say it is neither a partner nor an enemy. By comparison, more than eight-in-ten Pakistanis consider China a partner (84%) and say they have a favorable opinion of the Asian superpower (85%).
The stamp-embossed cover and near-pocket-size trim make for ingenious packaging. With photos, diagrams, and maps throughout, this is a book for the field—you can almost see it stuck in a camouflaged backpack in Helmand province.--Newsweek
Kilcullen has taken a number of critical counterinsurgency lessons–some gained through harrowing experience–and packaged them in a handy, notebook-sized publication...I’ll certainly have it in my assault bag during my next deployment (whenever that might be). You should, too.--Me
Early on, Kilcullen drives home the point that success comes by changing with the environment: “counterinsurgency is at heart an adaptation battle.”--Newsweek
In short, the two recurring themes are flexibility and analysis. The counterinsurgent must be prepared to change his or her actions as the situation on the ground changes; and he or she must be prepared to review and analyze that situation and all its component parts. Good advice, but more than that, essential practice for effective operation.--Karaka PendThe final grade? I gave it a four out of five stars. Karaka Pend said it was a good read, but left something to be desired (METRICS, I tell you, METRICS!). Newsweek gave it a high B.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Best Leak Ever | ||||
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Adam Serwer, a staff writer for the American Prospect, tweeted this morning, “Former Military Intelligence Officer sez of wikileaks, ‘Its an AQ/Taliban execution team’s treasure trove.’”
This is a very real worry — despite Assange’s assurances that his organization is withholding 15,000 documents to “redact” or change any names, what assurances can we have that WikiLeaks will do a good job?
Can an organization whose sole purpose is exposing secret information really do a good job safeguarding the lives it endangers through exposure? They really cannot. The New York Times admitted as much, saying they took much greater pains not to provide readers the means to uncover the identities of anyone in the reports they mention (some of these efforts, like not linking to WikiLeaks, are almost cutesy on the Internet, but are nevertheless honest). “At the request of the White House,” the Times editors say, “[we] urged WikiLeaks to withhold any harmful material from its Web site.”
Small comfort, since WikiLeaks is barely trying. The materials in question mostly consist of immediate incident reports — seemingly downloaded directly from CIDNE, a massive reporting database the military maintains in Afghanistan and Iraq. These reports are about as accurate as first reports from a crime scene: often accurate in atmosphere, but usually wrong on details.
The military is rightly accused of overclassifying material, but in this case we have some idea of why: even with the names removed from these reports, you know where they happened (many still have place names). You know when they happened. And you know an Afghan was speaking to a U.S. soldier or intelligence agent. If you have times, locations and half the participants, you don’t need names to identify who was involved in a conversation — with some very basic detective work, you can find out (and it’s much easier to do in Afghanistan, which loves gossip).
If I were a Taliban operative with access to a computer — and lots of them have access to computers — I’d start searching the WikiLeaks data for incident reports near my area of operation to see if I recognized anyone. And then I’d kill whomever I could identify. Those deaths would be directly attributable to WikiLeaks.
