Neptunus Lex

Al Qaeda seems unimpressed with our president elect:
The second-in-command of Islamic militant network al-Qaeda has hit out at US President-elect Barack Obama.
In a message purportedly from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda deputy called Mr Obama a “house negro” - a demeaning term implying he served white people.
Mr Obama’s plan to bolster the US military presence in [...]

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An on-scene report from retired Army General Barry McAffrey in pdf format (H/T to Nose for the link).
THE BOTTOM LINE:
a. The United States is now clearly in the end game in Iraq to successfully achieve what should be our principle objectives:
• The withdrawal of the majority of our US ground combat forces in Iraq in [...]

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A compelling photo essay on one of the world’s most inhospitable places - Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley.

Check out the Marine SSgt with the Dragunov sniper rifle in panel #14. Must be a story there.

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Not all that and a bag of chips, if this excerpt from an (unclas) EOD SIGACT in IZ is any indicator.
Click on the image for larger:

Sure, the pay looks seductive. But you’ve got to check the complete compensation package before getting your hands dirty.
War is hell.

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The media are framing the recently concluded national election as a triumph of the politics of hope over those of fear. Over at Military.com, my classmate Ward Carroll accepts the premise, and walks the dog back home:
(The) fear started fading the minute George W. Bush stopped staying the course.  It continued to fade with the [...]

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Bounty on the head of AQ propaganda chief Abu Jihad al-Masri: $1,000,000
Cost of two Hellfire missiles: $138,000
Sending that b@stard straight to hell, at a savings to the tax payer of $986,200 (oops) $864,000 ? Priceless.
“Whatever happens
we have got,
the Reaper drone
and they have not.”
- With apologies to Hillaire Belloc

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The tradition of generous Arab hospitality to their guests is justifiably celebrated, but some guests - like fish - smell more than bad after a few of days. In fact, their company can be downright toxic:
A U.S. strike on a network of foreign fighters in Syria led to the capture of an Al Qaeda coordinator [...]

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Read this gripping tale of a UK Telegraph journalist caught in the middle of an ambush in Afghanistan:
“We’ll get shot at, I guarantee you 100 per cent,” Becker, a prison officer back in the United States, had said when I had joined his unit half an hour earlier. He had a dreadful Mohican-style army haircut [...]

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Colonel Timothy J. Geraghty, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired):
On Sunday morning, 23 October 1983, I awoke as usual at dawn, dressed, and went below to the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit’s Combat Operations Center to check the overnight communications traffic. I roamed outside my headquarters at Beirut International Airport to view the dawn, struck by the quiet [...]

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Let us put aside for now the notion of financially illiterate nostalgiacs for a vanished 7th Century caliphate hooting and gibbering over the US stock market slide, and focus instead up their declared preference for the candidacy of John McCain for president:
In language that was by turns mocking and ominous, the newest posting credited al-Qaeda [...]

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