Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 185

10 for the year: Yet another skipper of the USS the Sullivans gets heaved overboard

He is the third skipper
of the Sullivans to walk the plank in two years. Tough gig. "The
relief occurred as a result of an unprofessional command climate that was
contrary to good order and discipline," a Navy flak said in a statement that
doesn't really illuminate the situation. 

I wonder what is going on here. Maybe fire the crew
next time?

Who is killing former Iraqi air force pilots?

Aswat al-Iraq reports
that a former Iraqi military pilot was killed while driving in east Mosul.
Unexceptional, except that it reminded me of a rumor I heard in Iraq a few
years ago, that the Kurdish government was determined to identify and kill
everyone involved in the use of poison gas against Kurdish civilians in Halabja 25 years
ago.

If that program of Kurdish vengeance does indeed exist, I've
never seen it written about. Does anybody know more about this?

'High Ground': A movie for you all

By Stacy Bare

Best Defense movie critic

Go see the movie High Ground. If you are a veteran or
part of the military, it's an
important film to watch to remind yourself of what you and your brothers
and sisters in arms may be struggling with when they get out of the military,
and more importantly, how they are triumphing and how even out of the military,
you can continue to push yourself. If you are not in the military, it's an
important film to watch because it puts several incredible human faces onto the 'veteran issues' our country is struggling to resolve when our men and service
women come home from war.

The film, made by award winning filmmaker Michael Brown
through Serac
Films and the Outside Adventure Film School, is a survey of
11 veterans and one gold star mother (gold stars refer to those who have lost a
son, daughter, spouse, or family member at war) who make a trek to the top of
Lobuche Mountain in Nepal. They are supported in their mission by Erik Weihenmayer, the
first blind man to summit Mt. Everest, and his team of climbers and support
staff. Erik and his team initially set out to celebrate the 10-year anniversary
of his summit of Everest before taking on the larger veteran project through
the organization Soldiers
to the Summit.

The highlights of the film are not the breathtaking shots
of the Himalaya mountains and valleys, or watching the physically impressive
feats of men and women pushing their bodies in spite of a range of physical
disabilities, from missing limbs to a loss of eyesight. While Brown does a
fantastic job with these shots, the movie should be seen for the individuals
whose stories are told, often using home movies and old photographs alongside
the more polished cinematography.

Viewers are not invited to pity the veterans but are shown
real people to connect to, and at times, brutally honest descriptions of the
veteran experience. Most viewers should be able to see some of themselves in at
least one of the participants and perhaps this alone will be the movie's
triumph: to build a stronger bridge of understanding between the veteran and
non-veteran.

You may, as I did, find yourself criticizing or
questioning certain aspects of the overall project. For example, if as one of
the participants -- Dan Sidles -- suggests, climbing a mountain in the Himalayas
helps to create the camaraderie, sense of mission, and love that he felt while
in the service, could that same sense of camaraderie be found in climbing
mountains in the United States? And, for the same cost as climbing in Nepal, how
many more climbs, with how many more veterans could be held within the borders
of the country we defended?

The trick though is not to let the negatives that might
seep in at the corners get to you. All in all, High Ground is
a beautiful film, well shot, good action, and with a great story -- several
stories in fact -- that America needs to hear about wartime and the military
veteran experience. At 90 minutes, everyone has the time to go see the
movie and to learn something about how and why we, as individuals fight and
what it's like when we come home.

Make sure when the film comes to town to get your tickets
and if you miss it in the theaters, definitely get yourself the DVD. Stay up to
date on the film's tour and release dates here.

Stacy Bare served as a captain in the U.S. Army
from 2000-2004 and again from 2006-2007. He served as the Counter Terrorism
Team Chief in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in 2003-04 and as a Civil Affairs Team Chief in
Baghdad, Iraq, from 2006-07. He is now the Military Families and Veterans
Representative for the Sierra Club. At 6'8" and 260 pounds
of pure muscle, Stacy himself resembles a mountain. He probably would have been
signed by the All
Blacks as a flanker or fullback but for his love of veterans and
rock climbing.

Michael Phillips finds Marines in Afghanistan too young to remember 9/11

Or, if they do, have only vague memories, and at the time
certainly didn't understand what had happened. So reports Michael M. Phillips in a
depressing article in Saturday's Wall
Street Journal. Read it even though the owner has been found
unfit for decent company. (But hey -- this is the United States! When was that
ever a bar to owning a newspaper? Or working for one? Newspapers are full of
misfits, which often becomes evident only when they are promoted to management
jobs. In its glory days the Washington
Post specialized in aggressive
narcissists of all stripes, while the Wall
Street Journal's sweet spot was passive-aggressive middle-aged white
males.)

Comment of the day: Gourley on PTSD

Discussing
a new memoir of coming home from Iraq, he speaks much truth:

The problem is that if I just painted the broad strokes I'd
just look like a bastard. And that's what everyone with PTSD looks like.
They're just whiny, or surly, or can't get their stuff together, or a bastard.
And it's easy to dismiss someone and not help them when they're just a bastard.
But if you take a minute to sit down and start going through things with them,
then you realize that in reality they HAVE bastard. It's a disease. You really can
get it. The only thing worse than bastard is the rash everyone around you
breaks out in. It's called stigma, and it's an SOB. 

If you have to be a bastard, at least try to be
witty about it.

Peeling off those layers of stigma is no easy
job, though. That's why most guys don't even talk about it to the shrinks. A
lab coat and words like 'confidentiality' are to trust what a good OER is to
merit. Just because you've got one doesn't mean you actually have the other.
Our best therapists are not people with PhD's. They're the ones who've done the
same "study abroad" program we have. I can talk about those things
with other people who need to talk. I can tell those guys how I feel today
without pulling any punches or getting all choked up the way I would punching
it into a keyboard, because when I say it to them I know I'm telling them how
they're likely going to feel in a few years.

Comment of the day: Back when I was outfitting Nung tribal fighters with BARs

One of the fun things about overseeing this blog is the
comments that come in. I had to read this
one a coupla times: "I had two dozen BARs for my Nung tribal irregulars
in Laos. They were hugely more useful than our other basic weapon,
the 30 cal M1-A3 carbine (which barely pretended to be an automatic weapon)."

The amount of knowledge collectively possessed by all of you
amazes me.

The Navy starts firing COs two by two

Nos.
8 and 9 of 2012 got heaved last week whilst I was out "gigging catfish," as
Exum would say. There is some good news in the two latest: Someone got fired not for zipper problems but for what Navy Times called "inadequate performance in administration and
operations that were observed over an extended period of time."

Up with competence!

'The Long Walk': A striking forthcoming memoir of leading a bomb squad in Iraq, and then going crazy when back home

I recently read The
Long Walk, a book about leading an EOD team on two tours in Iraq. It isn't really a narrative, more a prolonged
rant. I think a better title would have been "The Crazy: A memoir of Iraq and
after." But it certainly evoked Iraq for me in a way that many memoirs do not.
It has a lot of lines that resonated with me -- I found myself reading the book
for these:

--"Everything about Iraq sucked. I
loved it."

--"No one drives through the center
of Hawija unless forced: so much hate packed into such small space."

--"You are a different person on
graduation day from the day you started [EOD school]. . . . It's like being a
surgeon, except if you screw up, you die, not the patient."

--On driving an Iraqi dirt road at
night: "Like snow flurries back home, the dust just reflected back at us what
little light we gave off."

--"Sometimes, when the calls pile
up, you can go from yesterday to tomorrow and never get to today."

--". . . so prodigious the blood
soaking into the ground that it contaminates the oil reserves hidden beneath
the rocky desert."

--"Two months later we had a Day of
Five VBIEDs. By that time I was numb, my brain a tingle, and I have no memory
of it at all."

--"Every moment you are being shot
at you are blissfully, consciously, wonderfully, tangibly alive."

--Murphy's Law: "The odds say
Murphy always win in the end."

--"I died in Iraq. The old me left
for Iraq and never came home . . . . I liked the old me. . . . Everyone longs
for the old me. No one particularly wants to be with the new me. Especially
me."

--"Until one day, seemingly out of
the blue, it surprised me walking down the street. I stepped off a curb normal.
I landed Crazy." 

--"There are two of me now. The
logical one watches the Crazy one."

--"my first thought is always the
same. Will I be Crazy today? And the answer is always 'yes' before my feet hit
the floor."

--Considering going back for
another tour in Iraq: "The Crazy purrs its approval."

--"Twitch. The left eye has been
bad today."

--"When the depravity of this world is laid
before you in its ruin, and you discover yourself mired in it, rather than
above, what hope do you have?"

--"Forget the starter's pistol.
There is a finisher's pistol, and it could go off at any time."

Eisenhower on prayer in his cabinet

The more religious members of Eisenhower's cabinet asked
that he begin its meetings with a prayer. Ultimately the cabinet decided to do
so in silence. Once when Ike launched straight into a meeting, he was slipped a
note, and then blurted out, "Oh, goddammit, we forgot the silent prayer." (P.
566, Jean Edward Smith's new
biography of Eisenhower.)

Rebecca's War Dogs of the Week: Lackland AFB hosts DoD K-9 trials

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

A quick war-dog postcard from the reporting road this week:
Lackland Air Force Base is hosting a branch-wide K-9 team seminar and
competition for the first time in over a decade. There are 40 incredible teams
from all over the country competing -- a handful of participants have even
traveled in from U.S. bases around the world in countries like Japan and Italy.
The competition is three days and consists of a range of obstacles involving
patrol and detection work. The winners will be announced this weekend.

One of the teams competing is:

Staff Sgt. Pascual
Gutierrez Jr., U.S. Air Force, and MWD Mack. Sgt. Gutierrez is a native of San
Diego, CA and is assigned to the 10th Security Forces Squadron, U.S. Air Force
Academy, Colorado Springs, CO. Mack is a patrol/narcotics detection dog and the
two have been teamed for one month. 

This is my third time watching Gutierrez work canines and so
far, he and Mack are looking good in this competition. In this photo, Mack
takes refuge in as much shade as he can find. The veterinary techs stationed at
the leg of the competition have just poured cold water on the dog's back to
help keep the dog's temperature in check. It's hot and humid out here in San
Antonio and not all the dogs are accustomed to the climate. Mack, who has a
very gray muzzle, isn't as old as he looks. But the light whiskers have
garnered him a great nickname -- other handlers in the competition watching
Gutierrez work today starting calling this canine, the "ghost-faced killer."

You can check out a few of the competitors here.

Rebecca Frankel, on leave from
her FP desk, is currently writing
a book about military working dogs, to be published by Free Press.