Can I get a duh . . .


From the NY Times . . .

Documents Say Iran
Aids Militias From Iraq

American officials have long cited Iranian training and weapons as reasons for the lethality of attacks by Shiite fighters in Iraq. Iranian officials deny that such training takes place.

Now, more than 80 pages of newly declassified intelligence documents for the first time describe in detail an elaborate network used by Iraqis to gain entry into Iran and train under Iranian supervision. They offer the most comprehensive account to date to support American claims about Iranian efforts to build a proxy force in Iraq. Those claims have become highly politicized, with Bush administration critics charging that accounts of Iranian involvement have been exaggerated.

Actually, the story reminds us one hopeful fact - the friction between the Iraqi trainees and the Iranians.

The whole story is here.

Are you hot?

You think it's hot where you are, huh? These guys are hot . . .

Laugh or cry?

Seriously, no one knew this??? . . .

China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo

" . . . Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret “alternative” interrogation methods.

Several Guantánamo documents, including the chart outlining coercive methods, were made public at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17 that examined how such tactics came to be employed.

But committee investigators were not aware of the chart’s source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The chart and article were from an analysis of Communist Chinese torture - um, interrogation methods - used during the Korean War to extract (false) confessions, which at least some of the commies apparently believed were truthful. (Well sure, because it's what they believed to begin with, the schmucks.)

Supposedly, the Guantánamo interrogators took the methods without knowing where they'd come from... and by implication, whether they'd work or not.

I mean, duh, even I saw the parallel. Doesn't anyone study - or even read - history any more?

Come on. I'm thinking there's more to the story, but then I'm an optimist ...

Click here for Times story

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?ex=1372737600&en=727ea9eaf9d71aa3&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Apache attack...



Notice the layered procedure to get clearance to fire?

The longer version gives a better feel for the mission...

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=31d_1212789344

Of course, some of us just like the boom...

Balls, baby



Driving a plane is like driving a bus, right?

The computer graphics were made with a 777 image, but the photos are real. I'm asking for these guys next time I fly . . .